People

Members of the DRC share a wide range of expertise that covers the fields of literature (from the Classics to the present), cinema history, drama, theatre, performance and live art, translation, aesthetics, literary and cultural history and theory, political economics, and philosophy.

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Director

Profile of Jane Desmarais

Professor Jane Desmarais

Jane Desmarais is the Director of the DRC. She is Editor-in-Chief of Volupté: Interdisciplinary Journal of Decadence Studies and Chair of the British Association of Decadence Studies (BADS).

 

Deputy Directors

Profile of Dr Adam Alston

Dr Adam Alston

Adam Alston is Reader in Modern and Contemporary Theatre at Goldsmiths. He runs the Staging Decadence project, and is Co-Deputy Chair of the Decadence Research Centre.

Profile of Dr Alice Condé

Dr Alice Condé

Alice Condé is Lecturer at Goldsmiths, and Co-Deputy Director of the DRC. She is Deputy Editor of  Volupté and Secretary of the British Association of Decadence Studies.

Profile of Dr Jessica Gossling

Dr Jessica Gossling

Jessica Gossling is Lecturer at Goldsmiths and Assistant Editor of The Literary Encyclopedia. She is also Deputy Editor of  Volupté and Treasurer of the British Association of Decadence Studies

Members

Emeritus Professor Chris Baldick 

Chris Baldick is co-editor with Jane Desmarais of Decadence: An Annotated Anthology (2012) and of Arthur Symons: Selected Early Poems (2017).  Decadence is one of a number of strands of Chris Baldick’s research in the field of 19th-century literature.  

Dr Isobel Hurst 

Isobel Hurst’s research examines the reception of Greek and Latin literature in English, looking at the connection between classical education and authorship and women writers’ creative engagement with the classical tradition.  

Dr Ben Levitas 

Ben Levitas practices an interdisciplinary approach to theatre, in particular integrating theatre history with cultural and political history – with a specialism in Irish studies.  

Eleanor Keane 

Eleanor Keane’s thesis examines fin-de-siècle fairy tales as examples of queer decadent narratives, and her research interests focus on the decadent fairy tale, literary decadence and the visual arts, and expressions of gender, decadence, and sexuality within the late nineteenth century. 

Dr Sam Kunkel 

Sam Kunkel double-majored in French and Russian languages and literature at Oberlin College and holds a masters degree from the Sorbonne as well as a doctorate from the University of Paris-Saclay in the field of comparative literature. Sam is the editor of Faunus, the journal of Arthur Machen studies, and Reviews Editor for  Volupté.  

Dr Sandra Leonard 

Sandra M. Leonard is an Associate Professor of English at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania. She is editor-in-chief of the COVE edition of Oscar Wilde's The Portrait of Mr. W.H. and Reviews Editor for   Volupté.  

Professor David Weir 

David Weir is a Goldsmiths Distinguished Visiting Scholar and Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City, where he taught literature, linguistics, and cinema.  

Advisory Board