Dr. Claire Wilkinson
Biography
I studied for my BA at Cambridge and then went to York to complete my MA. I returned to the Faculty of English in 2013 to begin work on my PhD as the Winton Doctoral Scholar in English and Economics. My thesis was titled 'Imaginary Economies: Literature and Financial Crisis, 1720-1975' and it examined the representation of four epochs of financial crisis in literary writing (the South Sea Bubble of 1720, the 'Railway Manias' of the 1840s, the (first) Barings Bank crisis (1890), and the oil crises of the early 1970s). The degree was awarded in 2017.
I hold a Fellowship at Robinson College (2023–present), where I am Assistant Professor of English. I was a Teaching Associate in Eighteenth-Century English Literature at the Faculty of English, and a Fellow of Murray Edwards College, from 2018–2023.
I'm particularly interested in issues related to access to further education, and I have been involved in many projects which try to help students in non-selective state schools gain entry to competitive universities. I ran the Faulty's Sutton Trust and Experience Cambridge programmes from 2015 to 2022, alongside a large project funded by the Cambridge Admissions Office, which aimed to introduce university-level English to state school students in East Anglia. Please get in touch if you'd like to talk about anything related to university access.
Research Interests
I am currently completing my monograph, Re-writing the South Sea Bubble, which offers a new assessment of literature written at the time of 1720's South Sea Bubble. My research looks at hitherto neglected writers and their work (including their letters, plays, poems, and wills, amongst other things), alongside new scholarship in history and economics, to argue that the cultural narratives that shape our understanding of the Bubble need to be revised.
My general research interests are: eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature and culture; economics and literature 1688–1850; political economy; Marxism.
I was the co-convenor of ART / MONEY / CRISIS at CRASSH (http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/26186), and a contributing writer to a theatre project at the Barbican (September 2018), which explored alternative economic futures (http://metisarts.co.uk/we-know-not-what-we-may-be/).
Areas of Graduate Supervision
I contribute to supervision/teaching for the MPhil in English Studies and I am an advisor for several PhD students. I am happy to receive enquiries from any potential postgraduate student working in my field.
Connect with Claire
Publications
Articles and Chapters
Wilkinson, C. L., 'Economics', in Jonathan Swift in Context, ed. by Joseph Hone and Pat Rogers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024), pp. 350–57
Wilkinson, C. L., 'On Bubbles and Bubbling: The Idea of the "South Sea Bubble"', in Explorations in the Digital History of Ideas: New Methods and Computational Approaches, ed. by Peter de Bolla (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024), pp. 206–224
Wilkinson, C. L., 'Pamphlet Poetry and the South Sea Bubble', in The Bubble Act: New Perspectives from Passage to Repeal and Beyond, ed. by Helen Paul, Nicholas Di Liberto and D'Maris Coffman (London: Palgrave, 2023), pp. 85–110
Wilkinson, C. L., 'The Empty Centre of Conrad's Nostromo', Cambridge Quarterly, 47 (2018), 201-21
Wilkinson, C. L., '"The Visionary Scene was Lost in Air": the South Sea Bubble in Literature', in Political Economy, Writing, and the Formation of Knowledge, 1720-1850, ed. by Richard Adelman and Catherine Packham (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018), pp. 5-34
Reviews
Wilkinson, C. L., 'The Problem of Profit: Finance and Feeling in Eighteenth-Century British Literature' (review), Journal of British Studies, 60 (2021), 706-710.
Wilkinson, C. L., 'The Literary Origins of Financial Crisis', Cambridge Quarterly, 48 (2019), 78-83
Wilkinson, C. L., 'Science and Poetry in Deep Time', Cambridge Quarterly, 46 (2017), 291-99
Wilkinson, C. L., 'For Writers or for Readers?', Cambridge Quarterly, 44 (2015), 383–87
Wilkinson, C. L., 'O, Damn the Shibboleth of Sex!', Cambridge Quarterly, 44 (2015), 77–83