Professor Nicole Pohl

Nicole Pohl works on eighteenth-century English literature with a particular interest in women's letters and literature, European Enlightenment and European literary networks. Her other research area is utopias and utopianism.

Nicole Pohl has published and edited books on women's utopian writing in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, European salons and epistolarity. Nicole Pohl is welcoming MA/MRes/PhD projects that concern any aspect of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century literature, utopias and utopianism.

She was on the Management Committee of COST Action IS0901: Women’s Writing in History, financed by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology).The COST Action developed a large scale research project to lay the groundwork for a new history of European women’s participation in the literary field of the centuries before 1900. See:http://www.womenwriters.nl/index.php/Project_news

Nicole is the General Editor of the interdisciplinary and peer-reviewed journal Utopian Studies. For enquiries, please contact her on: npohl.utopia@googlemail.com

  @ UtopiaSJournal

For a sample issue, please see: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/utopianstudies.24.2.issue-2

She is the Editor-in-Chief of the Elizabeth Montagu Correspondence Online (EMCO) project: https://www.elizabethmontagunetwork.co.uk/

Research group membership

Nicole Pohl is a co-convenor of the Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture Seminar which is the English Faculty seminar for eighteenth-century studies at the University of Oxford. The seminar meets fortnightly during Oxford Term time, to hear papers by visiting academics from a range of faculties and disciplines. Since the first meeting in 1986, the character of the seminar has been scholarly, interdisciplinary and convivial. 

Nicole Pohl is a member of the

• Society for Utopian Studies;
• Utopian Studies Society; 
• Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer die Erforschung des 18. Jahrhunderts;
• Council for European Studies (CES)

Research grants and awards

• British Academy travel scholarship to Copenhagen: Karen Margrethe "Kamma" Rahbek's literary salon at the Bakkehuset, £ 1350, 2019
• Santander Research Scholarship Scheme (£ 1200): archival visit to Wroclaw
• Oxford Brookes Research Excellence Award 2017/18 (£ 5000)
• HEIF Knowledge Transfer Marketing Fund, The Chearful Companion: An evening of culture by candlelight in the eighteenth-century home, hosted at Pegasus OutBurst, 2014 (£900)
• HSS Research Event Fund, The Chearful Companion: An evening of culture by candlelight in the eighteenth-century home, hosted at Headington Hall, 2013 (£1200)
• Mellon Fellowship, Huntington Library, USA ($2000), 2012
• Co-investigator for AHRC Network Grant for pilot project, The Collected Letters of Elizabeth Montagu, £332163 (2010-12). See: https://www.elizabethmontagunetwork.co.uk/
• Scholarship to attend The Institute for the Editing of Historical Documents (Camp Edit), Madison, USA, $ 2000 (2009)
• AHRC Research Leave Grant to complete The Collected Letters by Sarah Scott, 2009/10 (£25 370)
• Co-Investigator of ISCH Action IS0901 (European Cooperation in Science and Technology):Women Writers in History - Toward a New Understanding of European Literary Culture, € 400 000 (2009-13)
• Oxford Brookes Institute for Historical and Cultural Research conference grant (£ 500), 2009
• ASECS Women’s Caucus Fellowship for Editing/Translating ($1000), 2008
• Helen L. Bing Fellowship, Huntington Library, USA ($ 2000), 2002
• AHRB Small Research Grant (£ 2500), 1999
• Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung conference grant (DM 300), 1998
• Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung conference grant (DM 300), 1997
• University of London Central Research Fund (£ 500), 1995
• British Academy Postgraduate Studentship (£27 000), 1994-1997

• Podium Discussion at King’s Place in London, 16 May 2016, Utopia – Then and Now
• ‘Redezeit’, WDR  (German public-broadcasting institution based in the Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia ), May 2016
• Brighton Fringe Festival, podium discussion on Utopia with David Bramwell, Robert Llewellyn, Stevyn Colgan, 20 May, 2015
• Appearance on the BBC Radio 4 program In Our Time on April 23, 2015 to speak on Frances Burney.
• Public Debate with David Bramwell, Blackwell's Oxford, 18.9.2014, No 9 Bus to Utopia Tour
• Appearance on the BBC Radio 4 program In Our Time on 6 June 2014 to speak about the Bluestockings
• The Chearful Companion: An evening of culture by candlelight in the eighteenth-century home. This was an interactive event between Oxford Brooks English and Modern Language Department and the AHRC-funded Digital Miscellanies Index Project at the University of Oxford, supported by the early music duo Alva (Vivien Ellis and Gilles Lewis). Events were held at the Geoffrey Museum, London; Headington Hall, Oxford; St Peter’s College, University of Oxford, and the Pegasus Theatre, Oxford between 2012-2014. I lead a workshop on eighteenth-century textiles as part of the evening.

• Since 2019,  assessor of Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) Collaborative Awards Scheme
• Member of the  Editorial Board of the Palgrave Studies in Utopianism Series
• Since 2017, member of the Arts & HumanitiesResearch Council (AHRC) Peer Review College
• Since 2015, member of Vitae
• Since 2009, member of the Association of Documentary Editing
• Since 1997, member of British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
• Since 1997, member of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
• Since 1995, member of the Society of Utopian Studies (and member of Steering Committee)

Conferences organised

International

• Writing Materials: Women of Letters from Enlightenment to Modernity. King’s College, London and The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2012
• Voices in Dialogue: Ideational Production and Reception of Women’s Writing in Europe, Chawton House/University of Southampton, 2011
• Utopian Studies Conference, New Lanark, 2005

National

• Women’s Literary Networks, 1580-present, University of London, 2009
• British Female Communities, 1640-1810, University of London, 1995

Invited keynote conference presentations/lectures 

• ‘From Niels Klim to Jordskott; Utopia in the Nordic Tradition’, Nordic Utopias and Dystopias, NorLit Conference 2017, Turku, Finland

• TORCH Enlightenment Correspondences Network: “Cosmopolites or Nationalists?”: Mme de Stael, Anna Amalia of Saxe-Weimar, Frederick II, Rahel Varnhagen and Caroline de la Motte-Fouque in Dialogue , in January 2017 in Oxford
• ‘Of Balloons and Foreign Worlds: Mary Hamilton’s Utopianism’, Queen Mary, University of London, 2015 
• 'An Editor's Duty is indeed that of most Danger' , Future of Editing Seminar, University of Oxford, 2014   (http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/notices/2014/nov-05 Comment: http://austgate.co.uk/2014/11/future-of-editing-some-reflections-on-nicole-pohl-on-sarah-scott/
• ‘Eighteenth-Century Women’s Writing’, University of Basel, 2013
• Graduate Workshop for Manuscripts and Women’s Writing, University of Madrid, 2012
• ‘Craftivism: Craft + Activism=Utopia?’ Spectres of Utopia, University of Lublin, Poland, 2010
• ‘Nostalgia, Utopia and the Country House’, Bridges to Utopia, University of Limerick, 2009

Selected conference presentations since 2003

• 'The Dilemma of Evil in Utopia', Utopian Studies Conference, Charles University, Prague.
• ‘Collective Roots: Homesteading and Political Protest’, Utopian Studies Conference, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, 2012. 
• ‘Living Backwards: Time and Hope in Werner Koch’s See-Leben Trilogy’, Utopia, Crisis and Justice, University of Cyprus, 2011.  
• ‘The Plausible Selves of Sarah Scott’, Editing the Eighteenth Century, University of Glasgow, 2009. 
• ‘Relative Values: Household and Community in Sarah Scott’s Work, BSECS, University of Oxford, 2009.
• ‘The Paradox of the Voyage Utopia’, New Worlds Reflected: Representations of Utopia, the New World and other Worlds (1500-1800), University of London, 2009
• ‘Editing Eighteenth-Century Letters’, "'I Remain, &c.': Addressing the Eighteenth-Century Letter," University of Oxford, 2008
• ‘“Perfect Reciprocity”: Salon Culture and Epistolary Conversations’, Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies, University of York, 2005
• ‘An Emblem of Themselves’: The Country House as Utopia’,Women and the British Country House 1650-1900 Conference, University of  York, 2004
• ‘Architecture and Utopia: Lady Mary Hamilton’s Munster Village’, Enlightenment Utopias ,Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies, University of York, 2003
• ‘Wunsch-Räume, Schreib-Räume: Die querelle des femmes and Utopia’, Querelle des femmes Conference, University of Frankfurt, 2003

• Utopian Studies (@UtopianSJournal)
• Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture Research Seminar (@NPohlELCRS)
• http://www.psupress.org/journals/jnls_utopian_studies.html

Press, publicity and reviews

• Interview with ABC, Future Tense: Utopia’s Second coming, September 2012 (podcast: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/futuretense/utopia27s-second-coming/4267534)
• BBC Radio 4, In Our Time, on the Bluestockings.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b045c0h9.
• BBc Radio 4, In Our Time, on Fanny Burney. http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/iot