Emma Liggins

Emma Liggins is a Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Manchester Metropolitan University, where she has worked since 2005. She is a founding member and Co-Director of the Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies (2023–present) and the Long Nineteenth-Century Network (2014–2023). Her interdisciplinary research bridges literature, history, and heritage studies.

• PGCHE with SEDA accreditation, Edge Hill College of Higher Education (1998)
• PhD, University of Leeds (1997)
• MA, University of Leeds (1993)
• BA, University of Manchester (1992)

Her research focuses on Victorian and modernist women’s writing, particularly Gothic literature, ghost stories, sensation fiction, and New Woman narratives. She explores intersections of urban culture, gender, and memorialization, including Victorian mourning practices and cemetery studies. Recent work examines death spaces and interdisciplinary collaborations with heritage institutions.

Emma has co-curated exhibitions at Speke Hall and participated in AHRC-funded projects like Celebrations: Victorian and Edwardian Greetings Cards. She contributes to editorial boards, peer-review processes, and public engagement initiatives, including workshops on nineteenth-century collections.

Her teaching includes undergraduate units on Gothic literature, nineteenth-century writing, and modernism, as well as MA-level courses on the Gothic and twentieth-century Gothic studies. She supervises PhD projects on topics such as female Gothic, feminist periodicals, and queer theory in literary contexts.

Collaborations include the Special Collections Museum, Manchester Poetry Library, Portico Library, Brontë Parsonage Museum, and other heritage organizations. She actively promotes interdisciplinary research through partnerships with libraries, museums, and historic houses in the North West of England.