KEYNOTE

We are pleased to announce that our keynote speaker will be Professor Sharon Ruston.

Professor Ruston is Chair in Romanticism at Lancaster University (since 2013). Before this, she was Chair in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture at Salford University (since 2009). She has published Creating Romanticism: Case Studies in the Literature, Science and Medicine of the 1790s (2013); Romanticism: An Introduction (2010); Shelley and Vitality (2005) and is currently editing The Collected Letters of Sir Humphry Davy for OUP (see http://www.davy-letters.org.uk/).

Abstract:

‘Literature, science and medicine in the early nineteenth century’

In my talk I will discuss ways that we might consider the relationships that exist between literature, science, and medicine using specific examples from the early nineteenth century. I will discuss chemistry, the transition from provincial to metropolitan science using Humphry Davy’s career as an example, the science that led us to Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, the ‘Vitality Debate’, and geology.

Professor Ruston will also take part in the expert panel.

Advertisement