Dr Megan Coyer

  • Senior Lecturer (English Literature)

telephone: 01413304603
email: Megan.Coyer@glasgow.ac.uk

Room 507, No 2 The Square, School of Critical Studies

Import to contacts

ORCID iDhttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X

Research interests

Research Interests

*Literature and Medicine
*Medical Humanities
*Scottish Literature
*Romanticism
*The Nineteenth-Century Periodical Press
*James Hogg
*Textual Editing
*Digital Humanities
  • Literature and Medicine
  • Medical Humanities
  • Nineteenth-century Literature
  • Scottish Literature
  • Romanticism
  • Periodical Studies
  • Textual Editing

Background

Megan Coyer received her PhD in Scottish Literature from the University of Glasgow in 2010, with her thesis entitled, ‘The Ettrick Shepherd and the Modern Pythagorean: Science and Imagination in Romantic Scotland’. After completing her PhD, she worked as a Research Assistant on the Stirling/South Carolina Research Edition of The Collected Works of James Hogg and the Glasgow University Chancellor’s Fund and Carnegie Trust-funded Abbotsford Library Annotations Project. She also acted as the Project Assistant for the RSE/Scottish Government-funded Medical Humanities Research Network Scotland (MHRNS).

Her first degree is a B.S. in Neuroscience from Lafayette College (Easton, PA USA), where she was a recipient of a Goldwater Scholarship, the premier national undergraduate award of its type in the fields of mathematics, science, and engineering. 

Coyer held a Wellcome Trust Medical Humanities Research Fellowship from 2012-15 for her research project, ‘The Medical Blackwoodians and Medico-literary Synergy in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical Press’. She examined the wide-ranging literary and medical careers of several Blackwoodian authors and the role of the Romantic periodical press in cross-fertilising medical and literary ideas. The primary output of this project was a monograph entitled, Literature and Medicine in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical Press: Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 1817-1858 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017) (paperback, 2018). With Dr David Shuttleton, she also co-edited Scottish Medicine and Literary Culture, 1726-1832 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2014).

Coyer joined the English Literature subject area as lecturer in 2015 and is now also Co-Director of the Medical Humanities Research Centre. She led the Wellcome Trust-funded initiative to build the ‘Glasgow University Medical Humanities Network’, which connected individuals working across a range of disciplines and practices at the University of Glasgow, interested in the intersections of medicine, culture, and the arts and humanities. With Dr Gavin Miller (PI), she subsequently led a larger medical humanities capacity-building initiative, the ‘Glasgow Medical Humanities Network’. This Wellcome Trust-funded network brought together and enhancing medical humanities across universities and collections in the city of Glasgow.

In 2018, she joined the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s Young Academy of Scotland (YAS). Her most recent invited talks include a paper for the ‘Explorations in Medical Humanities’ lecture series at the Heyman Centre for the Humanities (Columbia University) and a paper for the ‘Science, Medicine and Culture in the Nineteenth Century’ lecture series at Oxford University. She has also appeared on BBC1’s ‘Grand Tours of Scotland’ and BBC Radio Scotland to discuss her work on Robert Burns and phrenology. You can listen to a 'Body of Work Heritage Podcast' about her work on Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Burns, and phrenology here.

Recent and Current Research

Coyer's scholarly edition of James Hogg’s Contributions to Fraser’s Magazine was published by Edinburgh University Press in July 2025, as part of the Stirling/South Carolina Research Edition of the Collected Works of James Hogg. Her editorial work received funding from the University of Glasgow Academic Returners Fund and the Carnegie Trust.

Her primary expertise is in nineteenth-century literature and medical culture, particularly in the Scottish context. With Dr Matthew Creasy, she is currently developing a version of the boardgame, 'Pandemic', which tells the story of Glasgow's experience of the cholera epidemic of 1832. They have playtested the game at several public engagement events, and they welcome invitations to try out the game for other audiences. She has other medical humanities projects in development, relating to nineteenth-century medical storytelling.

Research groups

  • Romanticism/18th Century
  • Victorian

Publications

List by: Type | Date

Jump to: 2025 | 2023 | 2021 | 2020 | 2018 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2005
Number of items: 26.

2025

Coyer, Megan ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X (2025) ‘By famine, sword, and pestilence’: James Hogg and Cholera in Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country. Scottish Literary Review, (Accepted for Publication)

Coyer, Megan ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X (2025) Contributions to Fraser's Magazine for Town and Country. [Scholarly Editions]

2023

Coyer, Megan ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X (2023) Romantic autopsy: literary form and medical reading. Review of English Studies, 74(313), pp. 183-185. (doi: 10.1093/res/hgac088)[Book Review]

2021

Coyer, Megan ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X (2021) James Hogg: Contributions to English, Irish, and American Periodicals, ed. by Adrian Hunter, with Barbara Leonardi. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020. ISBN 9780748695980. hbk/ebook £80. Scottish Literary Review, 13(2), pp. 135-138. [Book Review]

2020

Coyer, Megan ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X (2020) Reading medicine in Blackwood’s. In: Mason, Nicolas and Mole, Tom (eds.) Romantic Periodicals in the Twenty-First Century: Eleven Case Studies from Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. Series: Edinburgh critical studies in romanticism. Edinburgh University Press: Edinburgh, pp. 33-53. ISBN 9781474448123

2018

Coyer, Megan ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X (2018) Medicine and improvement in the Scots Magazine; and Edinburgh Literary Miscellany, 1804-17. In: Benchimol, Alex and McKeever, Gerard Lee (eds.) Cultures of Improvement in Scottish Romanticism, 1707-1840. Series: The enlightenment world: political and intellectual history of the long eighteenth century. Routledge, pp. 191-212. ISBN 9781138482937

2016

Coyer, Megan ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X (2016) Literature and Medicine in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical Press: Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 1817-1858. Series: Critical studies in romanticism. Edinburgh University Press: Edinburgh. ISBN 9781474405607

2015

Coyer, Megan ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X (2015) Medical discourse and ideology in the Edinburgh Review: a Chaldean exemplar. In: Benchimol, Alex, Brown, Rhona and Shuttleton, David (eds.) Before Blackwood's: Scottish Journalism in the Age of Enlightenment. Pickering & Chatto: London, pp. 103-157. ISBN 9781848935501

2014

Coyer, Megan ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X (2014) The medical kailyard. Bottle Imp(15),

Coyer, Megan J. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X and Shuttleton, David E. (Eds.) (2014) Scottish Medicine and Literary Culture, 1726-1832. Series: Clio medica: perspectives in medical humanities. Rodopi: Amsterdam. ISBN 9789042038912

Coyer, Megan ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X (2014) The Embodied Damnation of James Hogg’s Justified Sinner. Journal of Literature and Science, 7(1), pp. 1-19. (doi: 10.12929/jls.07.1.01)

Coyer, Megan J. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X (2014) Phrenological controversy and the medical imagination: 'a modern Pythagorean' in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. In: Coyer, Megan J. and Shuttleton, David E. (eds.) Scottish Medicine and Literary Culture, 1726-1832. Series: Clio Medica: Perspectives in Medical Humanities (94). Rodopi: Amsterdam. ISBN 9789042038912

Coyer, Megan J. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X and Shuttleton, David E. (2014) Introduction. In: Coyer, Megan J. and Shuttleton, David E. (eds.) Scottish Medicine and Literary Culture, 1726-1832. Series: Clio medica : perspectives in medical humanities (94). Rodopi: Amsterdam, pp. 1-22. ISBN 9789042038912

2012

Coyer, M. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X (2012) Review of Highland Journeys (2010) and The Collected Letters of James Hogg, Vol. 3 (2008). BARS Bulletin and Review, 40, pp. 36-38. [Book Review]

Coyer, M. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X (2012) Hogg's companion. Drouth, 44, pp. 21-27. [Book Review]

Coyer, Megan ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X (2012) The poet’s skull: reading the bumps of genius. Burns Chronicle, pp. 41-48.

2011

Coyer, M. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X (2011) A psychological curiosity: a hoax on James Hogg. Studies in Hogg and His World, 21, pp. 48-59.

2010

Coyer, M. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X (2010) Review: The Kennedy & Boyd Anthology of Nineteenth-Century Scottish Literature. Bottle Imp, 7, [Book Review]

Coyer, M. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X (2010) The phrenological mask of the Ettrick Shepherd. Studies in Hogg and His World, 20, pp. 90-95.

Coyer, M. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X (2010) Review: Valentina Bold, 'James Hogg: A Bard of Nature’s Making' (2007). Scottish Literary Review, 2(2), pp. 173-175. [Book Review]

2009

Coyer, M. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X (2009) Disembodied souls and exemplary narratives: James Hogg and popular medical literature. In: Connolly, T. and Clark, S. (eds.) Liberating Medicine, 1720-1835. Series: Enlightenment world (10). Pickering & Chatto: London, pp. 127-139. ISBN 9781851966325

Coyer, M. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X (2009) The phrenological dreamer: The popular medical and fictional writing of Robert Macnish (1802-1837). In: Apothecary’s Chest: Magic, Art, and Medication. Cambridge Scholars Press, pp. 1-12. ISBN 9781443804943

2008

Gutman, David A., Coyer, Megan J. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X, Boss-Williams, Katherine A., Owen, Michael J., Nemeroff, Charles B. and Weiss, Jay M. (2008) Behavioral effects of the CRF1 receptor antagonist R121919 in rats selectively bred for high and low activity in the swim test. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 33(8), pp. 1093-1101. (doi: 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2008.05.003)

Coyer, M. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X (2008) Burns at The Mitchell. Eighteenth-Century Scotland, 22, pp. 3-4.

Coyer, M. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X (2008) The literary empiricism of the phrenologists: Reading the Burnsian bumps. Drouth, pp. 69-77.

2005

Hill, Wendy L., Ballard, Sarah S., Coyer, Megan J. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X and Rowley, Thomas (2005) Interaction of testosterone and breeding phase on the reproductive behavior and use of space in male zebra finches. Hormones and Behavior, 47(4), pp. 452-458. (doi: 10.1016/j.yhbeh.2004.11.016) (PMID:15777811)

This list was generated on Tue Sep 16 00:31:16 2025 BST.
Jump to: Articles | Books | Book Sections | Book Reviews | Edited Books | Scholarly Editions
Number of items: 26.

Articles

Coyer, Megan ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X (2025) ‘By famine, sword, and pestilence’: James Hogg and Cholera in Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country. Scottish Literary Review, (Accepted for Publication)

Coyer, Megan ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X (2014) The medical kailyard. Bottle Imp(15),

Coyer, Megan ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X (2014) The Embodied Damnation of James Hogg’s Justified Sinner. Journal of Literature and Science, 7(1), pp. 1-19. (doi: 10.12929/jls.07.1.01)

Coyer, Megan ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X (2012) The poet’s skull: reading the bumps of genius. Burns Chronicle, pp. 41-48.

Coyer, M. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X (2011) A psychological curiosity: a hoax on James Hogg. Studies in Hogg and His World, 21, pp. 48-59.

Coyer, M. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X (2010) The phrenological mask of the Ettrick Shepherd. Studies in Hogg and His World, 20, pp. 90-95.

Gutman, David A., Coyer, Megan J. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X, Boss-Williams, Katherine A., Owen, Michael J., Nemeroff, Charles B. and Weiss, Jay M. (2008) Behavioral effects of the CRF1 receptor antagonist R121919 in rats selectively bred for high and low activity in the swim test. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 33(8), pp. 1093-1101. (doi: 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2008.05.003)

Coyer, M. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X (2008) Burns at The Mitchell. Eighteenth-Century Scotland, 22, pp. 3-4.

Coyer, M. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X (2008) The literary empiricism of the phrenologists: Reading the Burnsian bumps. Drouth, pp. 69-77.

Hill, Wendy L., Ballard, Sarah S., Coyer, Megan J. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X and Rowley, Thomas (2005) Interaction of testosterone and breeding phase on the reproductive behavior and use of space in male zebra finches. Hormones and Behavior, 47(4), pp. 452-458. (doi: 10.1016/j.yhbeh.2004.11.016) (PMID:15777811)

Books

Coyer, Megan ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X (2016) Literature and Medicine in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical Press: Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 1817-1858. Series: Critical studies in romanticism. Edinburgh University Press: Edinburgh. ISBN 9781474405607

Book Sections

Coyer, Megan ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X (2020) Reading medicine in Blackwood’s. In: Mason, Nicolas and Mole, Tom (eds.) Romantic Periodicals in the Twenty-First Century: Eleven Case Studies from Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. Series: Edinburgh critical studies in romanticism. Edinburgh University Press: Edinburgh, pp. 33-53. ISBN 9781474448123

Coyer, Megan ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X (2018) Medicine and improvement in the Scots Magazine; and Edinburgh Literary Miscellany, 1804-17. In: Benchimol, Alex and McKeever, Gerard Lee (eds.) Cultures of Improvement in Scottish Romanticism, 1707-1840. Series: The enlightenment world: political and intellectual history of the long eighteenth century. Routledge, pp. 191-212. ISBN 9781138482937

Coyer, Megan ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X (2015) Medical discourse and ideology in the Edinburgh Review: a Chaldean exemplar. In: Benchimol, Alex, Brown, Rhona and Shuttleton, David (eds.) Before Blackwood's: Scottish Journalism in the Age of Enlightenment. Pickering & Chatto: London, pp. 103-157. ISBN 9781848935501

Coyer, Megan J. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X (2014) Phrenological controversy and the medical imagination: 'a modern Pythagorean' in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. In: Coyer, Megan J. and Shuttleton, David E. (eds.) Scottish Medicine and Literary Culture, 1726-1832. Series: Clio Medica: Perspectives in Medical Humanities (94). Rodopi: Amsterdam. ISBN 9789042038912

Coyer, Megan J. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X and Shuttleton, David E. (2014) Introduction. In: Coyer, Megan J. and Shuttleton, David E. (eds.) Scottish Medicine and Literary Culture, 1726-1832. Series: Clio medica : perspectives in medical humanities (94). Rodopi: Amsterdam, pp. 1-22. ISBN 9789042038912

Coyer, M. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X (2009) Disembodied souls and exemplary narratives: James Hogg and popular medical literature. In: Connolly, T. and Clark, S. (eds.) Liberating Medicine, 1720-1835. Series: Enlightenment world (10). Pickering & Chatto: London, pp. 127-139. ISBN 9781851966325

Coyer, M. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X (2009) The phrenological dreamer: The popular medical and fictional writing of Robert Macnish (1802-1837). In: Apothecary’s Chest: Magic, Art, and Medication. Cambridge Scholars Press, pp. 1-12. ISBN 9781443804943

Book Reviews

Coyer, Megan ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X (2023) Romantic autopsy: literary form and medical reading. Review of English Studies, 74(313), pp. 183-185. (doi: 10.1093/res/hgac088)[Book Review]

Coyer, Megan ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X (2021) James Hogg: Contributions to English, Irish, and American Periodicals, ed. by Adrian Hunter, with Barbara Leonardi. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020. ISBN 9780748695980. hbk/ebook £80. Scottish Literary Review, 13(2), pp. 135-138. [Book Review]

Coyer, M. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X (2012) Review of Highland Journeys (2010) and The Collected Letters of James Hogg, Vol. 3 (2008). BARS Bulletin and Review, 40, pp. 36-38. [Book Review]

Coyer, M. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X (2012) Hogg's companion. Drouth, 44, pp. 21-27. [Book Review]

Coyer, M. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X (2010) Review: The Kennedy & Boyd Anthology of Nineteenth-Century Scottish Literature. Bottle Imp, 7, [Book Review]

Coyer, M. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X (2010) Review: Valentina Bold, 'James Hogg: A Bard of Nature’s Making' (2007). Scottish Literary Review, 2(2), pp. 173-175. [Book Review]

Edited Books

Coyer, Megan J. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X and Shuttleton, David E. (Eds.) (2014) Scottish Medicine and Literary Culture, 1726-1832. Series: Clio medica: perspectives in medical humanities. Rodopi: Amsterdam. ISBN 9789042038912

Scholarly Editions

Coyer, Megan ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359X (2025) Contributions to Fraser's Magazine for Town and Country. [Scholarly Editions]

This list was generated on Tue Sep 16 00:31:16 2025 BST.

Grants

Wellcome Trust Research Fellowship: “The Medical Blackwoodians and Medico-literary Synergy in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical Press”. £132,151.

Wellcome Trust Medical History and Humanities Small Grant, "'Attentive Writers': Healthcare, Authorship, and Authority" (PI: Megan Coyer; Co-Is David Shuttleton, Gavin Miller, Elizabeth Reeder). £5,000.

Wellcome Trust Medical Humanities Small Grant, "Glasgow University Medical Humanities Network Website". £6,615

Carnegie Trust Research Incentive Grant, "Reading James Hogg in Fraser's Magazine, 1830-1836". £12,346

Supervision

I am interested in receiving proposals for PhD projects relating to my research interests in Literature and Medicine and nineteenth-century literature.

  • Alshammari, Aiman Mutlaq O
    Representations of Domestic Violence in Popular Literature of the Nineteenth Century
  • Gallagher, Alexandra
    Soulful Breathing: Examining S. T. Coleridge’s Embodied Dramas and Contemporary Conceptualisations of the Breath.

I have supervised PhD projects on: neuroscience and David Foster Wallace; the parasitologist and writer, Sir Ronald Ross (1857-1932); the Victorian afterlife of James Hogg; and contemporary Scottish illness narratives.

Teaching

In the English Literature subject area, I convene 'Writing the Body' (2B), the senior honours courses, 'Literature and Medicine' and 'An Introduction to Medical and Health Humanities', and the Victorian M.Litt. topic course on 'Embodiments', and contribute to the junior honours course, 'Literature, 1780-1840'.

I also convene the intercalated degree in Medical Humanities.