Jess Dunmore, Newnham

Biographical Information

Having graduated from the University of Oxford, I studied an MPhil at Cambridge before progressing onto a PhD. My current research is generously funded by the Cambridge Trust and Newnham College. When not immersed in the seventeenth century, I can usually be found in the lido or running out and about in the countryside.

Research Interests

My doctoral research recovers the 'elemental ecopoetics' of early modern natural philosophy, with a particular focus on English writers in the seventeenth century. In practice, this means I think critically about how rhetoric might provide a point of confluence between human and more-than-human actors in early modern scientific writing, working across scholarly disciplines of early modern science, rhetoric, and ecocriticism. Whilst my thesis adopts a relatively broad scope, key thinkers in my research include: Margaret Cavendish, Robert Boyle, Hester Pulter, Robert Hooke, and Thomas Browne. Informed by the nexus of material, ecological, and poetic encounters that underpin my research, I embrace the opportunities and challenges posed by creative, interdisciplinary forms of criticism.

My research interests include: early modern ecocriticism; seventeenth century natural philosophy; material studies; poetics and rhetoric; interdisciplinarity. I welcome inquiries for supervision relating to my research interests.

Within the Faculty, I co-convene Commonplace, the early modern reading group for graduate students, and also co-convene the Literatures, Ecologies, and Fictions seminar. Details of our upcoming talks and events can be found at: https://www.english.cam.ac.uk/seminars/LitEnvironment.html.

Selected Publications

'Bee-hold: Feeling the Buzz of Early Modern Natural Philosophy', Bee-ing Human, 08 July 2025, <https://bee-inghuman.newcastle.ac.uk/literature/bee-hold> 

Book review: 'Tiffany Jo Werth, The Lithic Imagination from More to Milton. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024. 449 pp. £103.00. IBSN: 9780198903963 (hb).', Renaissance Studies, 40.1 (2026), doi:10.1111/rest.13000