Peter Howarth

Professor Peter Howarth holds the role of Professor of Modern Literature at Queen Mary University of London's School of English and Drama. He joined the university in 2007 after teaching at the University of Nottingham and completing his PhD at the University of Cambridge. His academic background includes degrees from the Universities of Oxford (BA), Durham (BA in Contextual Theology), and Cambridge (PhD).

His research focuses on modernist poetry, performance studies, and the intersection of literature with pedagogy. Notable works include British Poetry in the Age of Modernism (2006), The Cambridge Introduction to Modernist Poetry (2011), and the upcoming The Poetry Circuit (2024), which explores live poetry performance. He has directed projects such as The Festival as Form, supported by AHRC funding, examining contemporary festival experiences.

Professor Howarth has been recognized with a National Teaching Fellowship (2012) for innovative teaching methods emphasizing contextual engagement. His supervision has guided over a dozen PhD students, including work on Auden’s influence on Chinese poets, Sylvia Plath’s Cambridge years, and alchemy in modernist poetry.

He actively engages with public scholarship through exhibitions at festivals like WOMAD, articles in The London Review of Books, and educational films for schools analyzing poets like Ted Hughes and W.B. Yeats. His research bridges academic and community contexts, reflecting a commitment to literature’s role in cultural and personal transformation.