About Us

Dr Curtis Runstedler is an IRIS-funded (Interchange Forum for Reflecting on Intelligent Systems) postdoctoral researcher in the Department of English Literatures and Cultures at the University of Stuttgart, Germany. 

He is also a proud medievalist and has published on medieval werewolves, alchemy, Anglo-Saxon saint cults, video games and medievalism, and more. 

He was previously a Teach@Tübingen fellow with the Excellence Initiative at Tübingen University, Germany, and was awarded his PhD in Medieval Literature at Durham University, UK, in 2018. Curtis also enjoys fossil hunting, fishing, and exploring the world.

Dr Sophie Franklin teaches at the University of Stuttgart, Germany. Her research specialises in nineteenth-century literature and culture, with specific expertise in representations of violence, the Brontës, and afterlives. 

Her first monograph, Violence and the Brontës: Language, Reception, Afterlives, is under contract with Edinburgh University Press. She is also the author of Charlotte Brontë Revisited: A View from the Twenty-First Century, and her work has appeared in Brontë Studies, Neo-Victorian Studies, and the Journal of Victorian Culture. Sophie's current project explores narratives of violence, health, and contagion in the nineteenth century.  

I am a Master of Letters (MLitt) in Romantic and Victorian Literature, having recently completed my postgraduate studies at the University of St Andrews. I will graduate in November 2022 with a Distinction and a placement on the Deans’ List for academic excellence. Prior to my Master’s degree I received a First Class Honours degree from Durham University in English Literature. 

I am principally a Dickensian scholar. My Master’s dissertation is entitled ‘“Groping its way with noiseless hands, and stealing around the bed”: Latent Child Sexual Abuse in the Novels of Charles Dickens’. (This piece of work was awarded a result of 95% and is currently pending publication.) My undergraduate dissertation is entitled ‘Beyond Volition: The Discourse of Compulsion in Dickens’. I am a longstanding member of the Dickens Fellowship and have had the opportunity to interview internationally renowned Dickensian scholar, Dr Paul Schlicke.  

My pursuit of the literary exposé of the darkest reaches of the human mind has led me to write on understated, intrinsic features of the novels of Charles Dickens, which have not received significant critical attention; the sexual abuse of children, and the discourse of compulsion as manifested through Dickens’s depiction of gambling addiction, obsession, alcoholism, and opium addiction. 

The theme of man falling prey to his own mind bears a haunting resonance throughout the novels of Charles Dickens. The author provides a powerful rendering of the snare posed by the human psyche, by vividly portraying mankind’s capacity for compulsion. Dickens’s personal experience of compulsion enabled him to accurately encapsulate the phenomenon of compulsion within his literature; he intuitively prefigures subsequent advancements in the field of psychology. Thus, Dickens’s presentation of compulsion illuminates the capacity of literature to actively participate in the development of human knowledge. Literature is evidently not a passive object that merely reflects established knowledge, but may constitute an independent source of new perception, derived from human experience.  

The analysis of Dickens’s treatment of compulsion also demonstrates the role of literary discourse in promoting contemporary paradigm shifts. His literature promoted the nineteenth-century psychiatric re-evaluation of addiction. As explored in my work, Dickens’s discourse of compulsion illustrates the interrelationship between literature and science as mutually informing and influencing objects.  

 My research interests also extend into the Conradian sphere; my previous work includes a research project entitled ‘Do the disparaging views of Western imperialism, expressed throughout Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, present a valid condemnation of the postcolonial novella Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad?’. During my research I had the privilege of interviewing world Conradian expert, Professor Robert Hampson, and leading expert in the literature of Chinua Achebe, Dr Alastair Niven. 

Sude Öner is an English Literature major at Istanbul Aydin University and Journalism and New Media at Ataturk University.

As a passionate reader and writer, Sude founded "The Eudaimonia Chronicles," an art magazine that provides a platform for showcasing the works of talented writers. Her interest in literature stems from her desire to explore themes related to feminism, social justice, and forensic science. 

Sude's passion for literature and science has inspired her to pursue further studies in these areas. She hopes to become a leading voice in the field of literature and science, using her skills and knowledge to make a positive impact on society. Through her work, she hopes to encourage others to explore the intersection between literature and science and discover the many ways in which these two fields can enrich people’s lives.