缅北禁地

Roles and responsibilities

As a Senior Lecturer in Romantic Literature, I teach and supervise undergraduates and postgraduates across the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics. I am also the Employability Lead for my School, an elected member of the University Senate and the University Council, and co-Chair of 缅北禁地’s INSIGHTS Public Lectures Committee.

My previous roles have included Postgraduate Research Director and MLitt DPD for my School (2023-24), HaSS Faculty Teaching Mentor (2019-22), an elected member of the HaSS Faculty Promotions Committee (2014-17), and Senior Tutor for Undergraduates (2016-18). 

Biography

I was born and brought up in London and did my undergraduate degree in English at UCL. After completing my MPhil and DPhil degrees at Oxford University and teaching as a stipendiary lecturer in English Literature at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, I joined 缅北禁地 as a Lecturer in Romantic Literature in 2006. 

Qualifications

BA (Hons) English Literature - UCL

MPhil - University of Oxford

DPhil - University of Oxford

Research Interests

My expertise is in British and Scottish Romanticism. My research focuses particularly on ideas about the role of the poet and the purpose of poetry in the Romantic period and Romantic poets’ responses to their epic forefathers. 

My first monograph, James Hogg and British Romanticism: A Kaleidoscopic Art (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), argues that Hogg's kaleidoscopic literary practice unsettles and reshapes our canonical understanding of the Romantic period and his place in it.

My current book project focuses on Keats’s rethinking of the epic genre in dialogue with pastoral and epic traditions and Romantic experimentations with the epic by poets who include Wordsworth and Byron.

My other research interests include national identity, labouring-class poetry, imagined places, utopianism, Romantic-era fiction, the Gothic, canon-making, parodies, and early nineteenth-century periodical culture.   

Recent Work

My recent work includes a chapter, 'Climbing Mount Parnassus: Keats among the Clouds', in Sports and Sociability in Britain in the Long Eighteenth Century, ed. by Alexis Tadie and Caroline Bertoneche (LUP, October 2025).

My other published work on Keats pursues his responses to Milton: '', in Review of English Studies (2024), ‘‘Patient Travail’: Keats and Samson Agonistes’, in a special issue of Romanticism in honour of Michael O'Neill, ed. by Sarah Wootton (2022), and 'Reawakening Lycidas: Keats, Milton, and Epic', in Review of English Studies (2020).

I have also explored Keats's engagement with Robert Burns in a book chapter on 'Keats at Burns's Grave' in John Keats and Romantic Scotland, ed. by Katie Garner and Nicholas Roe (OUP, 2022) and a contribution to , ''.

You can hear me as one of the contributors to Fiona Stafford’s BBC 3 radio documentary, , talking about Keats’s walking tour of the Lake District and Scotland in the summer of 1818.

Current Research

I am working on two book projects. The first focuses on Keats reaching for the epic. The second (longer-term) project examines the ways in which poets such as Coleridge, Shelley, Hogg, Keats, and Byron re-defined the social role and relevance of the poet, responding to an epic tradition, and using imagined other-world spaces to interrogate and explore the socio-political and artistic concerns of their day.   

Postgraduate Supervision

I have supervised a number of PhD and MLitt projects to successful completion and I welcome enquiries and applications from prospective postgraduate students who are interested in working in any of my areas of research interest and expertise.  

Undergraduate Teaching

SEL1034 Beginnings

SEL2203 Revolutionary Britain, 1789-1832

SEL3451 Keats and Romantic Epic (Module Leader)

SEL3362 Dissertation in English Literature 

Postgraduate Teaching

I supervise PhDs and MLitt projects in my areas of expertise and I have supervised a number of successful MA dissertations.

• Articles

  • O'Halloran M. . The Review of English Studies 2024, 75(320), 315-333.
  • O'Halloran M. . Romanticism 2022, 28(2), 128-140.
  • O'Halloran M. . The Review of English Studies 2020, 71(298), 93–116.
  • O'Halloran M. . Keats-Shelley Journal 2019, 68, 156-158.
  • O'Halloran M. . Romanticism 2016, 22(2), 177-190.
  • O'Halloran M, Kövesi S (Guest eds.). . Special Issue of The John Clare Society Journal 2003, 22.
  • O'Halloran M. . Studies in Hogg and his World 2001, (12), 40-55.

• Authored Book

  • O'Halloran M. . Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

• Book Chapters

  • O'Halloran M. . In: Garner K; Roe N, ed. John Keats and Romantic Scotland. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022, pp.105-121.
  • O'Halloran M. . In: Richard Marggraf Turley, ed. Keats's Places. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp.157-179.
  • O'Halloran M. . In: Angela Wright and Dale Townshend, ed. Romantic Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015, pp.207-223.
  • O'Halloran M. . In: Duncan, I., Mack, D.S, ed. The Edinburgh Companion to James Hogg. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012, pp.105-112.
  • O'Halloran M. . In: Stafford, F., Sergeant, D, ed. Burns and Other Poets. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011.
  • O'Halloran M. . In: Alker, S; Nelson, HF, ed. James Hogg and the Literary Marketplace: Scottish Romanticism and the Working-Class Author. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009, pp.43-55.
  • O'Halloran M. . In: Rubenstein, J; Hughes, G; O'Halloran, M, ed. Midsummer Night Dreams and Related Poems, The Collected Works of James Hogg. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008, pp.lxxvii-ci.
  • O'Halloran M. . In: Mack, DS, ed. The Queen's Wake : A Legendary Tale. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005, pp.lxxxvii-cxiii.