Josephine McDonagh

Josephine McDonagh is the George M. Pullman Professor of English at the University of Chicago, where she has taught since 2017. She also directs the Nicholson Center for British Studies since 2021 and serves as an editor for the journal Modern Philology. Her work spans 19th-century British literature, colonialism, migration studies, and commodity culture.

• PhD: University of Southampton, 1989

Research Focus: Her scholarship interrogates how 19th-century literature intersects with colonialism, imperial expansion, and global migration. She analyzes the spatial regimes of fiction shaped by demographic mobility, the ethical implications of hospitality in Victorian novels, and the cultural impact of colonial commodity networks like the opium trade.

Recent Contributions: Her 2021 book Literature in a Time of Migration examines 19th-century print cultures related to emigration. Collaborative projects link historical migration patterns to contemporary artistic responses, while edited volumes explore gender politics, colonial commodities, and radical traditions.

Teaching: Courses like Reading Cultures 1, Empire Books, and Narrating Migration emphasize interdisciplinary approaches, including archival research, digital methods, and critical theory. She co-teaches Research Methods required for English BA Theses.

Leadership: As director of the Nicholson Center for British Studies, she fosters multidisciplinary research on the British Isles and its colonial legacies, organizing workshops like the Atlantic Worlds Workshop and supporting emerging scholarship on colonialism.