Benjamin Colbert

Biography

I was educated on both sides of the Atlantic, completing my MPhil in English Romantic Studies at Oxford University in 1987 and my DPhil at UCLA in 1996. I joined the University of Wolverhampton in 1994, and became Reader in English Literature and founding Co-Director of the Centre for Transnational and Transcultural Research in 2010. I also serve on the editorial team for European Romantic Review (Routledge): from 2009 as Book Review Editor and from 2015 as Co-Editor.

Research Interest

My research interests are situated in Romantic Period studies, with an emphasis on travel writing and tourism, the work of Percy Bysshe Shelley, and print culture. My most recent work has been in the biographical/bibliographical recovery of forgotten travellers/travel writings, spearheaded by my British Academy funded project, Women’s Travel Writing, 1780-1840: Communities of Authorship (2016-18). This project is making available new archival research in the form of up-to-date and accurate short biographies of the authors found in the Women’s Travel Writing database. It is a pilot for a full database of all travel writings in the period that is set to provide firmer foundations for travel writing studies.