Dr Rhona Brown
- Senior Lecturer in Eighteenth-Century Scottish Literature and the Periodical Press (Scottish Literature)
telephone: 01413308529
email: Rhona.Brown@glasgow.ac.uk
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https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0073-8227Research interests
Research interests
- Eighteenth-century Scottish literature
- The eighteenth-century Scottish periodical press
- Eighteenth-century Scottish poetry/journalism and politics
- Scottish club culture in the eighteenth century
- Eighteenth-century Scottish literary networks
- Scottish Romanticism
- Allan Ramsay
- Robert Fergusson
- James Beattie
- Robert Burns
Biography
Rhona Brown is a graduate of Strathclyde and Glasgow Universities. Her doctoral thesis (GU, 2004) re-contextualised the work of eighteenth-century Edinburgh poet, Robert Fergusson.
Rhona joined Scottish Literature as a lecturer in 2006. Her teaching focuses on Scottish literature from the medieval period to the late eighteenth century and beyond. She currently serves as a General Editor on Brill/Rodopi's Scottish Cultural Review of Language and Literature (SCROLL) series and was, until 2013, Reviews Editor for Scottish Literary Review. She has organised many conferences: among others, she was co-organiser of 'Before Blackwood's: Scottish Journalism in the Age of Enlightenment' (GU, 2010) and co-convened the first World Congress of Scottish Literatures (GU, 2014). She has been heavily involved in establishing a new International Association for the Study of Scottish Literatures, in which she held the position of first Secretary. Rhona is also convener of the Research Sub-Group of Burns Scotland, a nationally recognised collection of Burns material which involves representatives from the libraries, museums, galleries and local authorities which hold Burns manuscripts and artefacts, and is Treasurer of the Universities Committee for Scottish Literature.
Her first monograph, Robert Fergusson and the Scottish Periodical Press, was published in 2012, and in 2011-12 she edited two newly-discovered works by eighteenth-century Scottish authors: James Beattie's Grotesquiad and a lost poem on an Edinburgh gentlemen's club by Fergusson. In 2015, she published a co-edited collection of essays (with Alex Benchimol and David Shuttleton) entitled Before Blackwood's: Scottish Journalism in the Age of Enlightenment. She has published journal articles and book chapters on James Currie, James Hogg, Laurence Sterne, James Tytler, Allan Ramsay and Robert Burns. She has recently completed several articles on the Cape Club, an eighteenth-century Edinburgh gentleman's club, and has worked on the reception of John Wilkes in contemporary Scottish periodicals. Rhona continues to research eighteenth-century Scottish authors' relationship with the periodical press and club culture, as well as eighteenth-century Scottish poetry generally. She is currently researching the depiction of Corsican politics in the Scottish press of the 1760s and 1770s and the radical Scottish newspapers and journals of the 1790s. She is Co-Investigator on two major, AHRC-funded editing projects - Editing Robert Burns for the Twenty-First Century: Poetry and Correspondence (PI Gerard Carruthers) and The Edinburgh Allan Ramsay (PI Murray Pittock). These projects will provide new, full scholarly editions of the work of both Burns and Ramsay; Rhona will co-edit the Correspondence of Burns, and will edit Ramsay's Poetry and Prose.
Grants
- Co-Investigator, Editing Robert Burns for the Twenty-First Century: Poetry and Correspondence (AHRC Major Research Grant, 2018-22; PI: Prof Gerard Carruthers, GU)
- Co-Investigator, The Edinburgh Allan Ramsay (AHRC Major Research Grant, 2016-21; PI: Prof Murray Pittock)
- Principal Investigator, The Edinburgh Gazetteer: Radical Networks and Journalism in 1790s Scotland (Royal Society of Edinburgh, 2016-17)
- Principal Investigator, Eighteenth-Century Scottish Authors and the Periodical Press, c.1720-c.1820 (Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, 2015-16)
- Principal Investigator, Robert Fergusson and the Contemporary Periodical Press (Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, 2008-09)
- Principal Investigator, British Academy Overseas Conference Grant (2006)
Supervision
Rhona has supervised MPhil and doctoral research on the work of Allan Ramsay and James Thomson, Thomas Carlyle, nineteenth-century Scottish women’s poetry, Ulster-Scots poetry, the work of Edwin Morgan and Liz Lochhead, Robert Burns and his contemporaries and studies of publisher and book history. She would be available to supervise postgraduate research on the wide range of eighteenth-century Scottish poetry, its relationship with politics, the Scottish periodical press and Scottish literary networks in the long eighteenth century.
Additional Information
- Senior Fellow, Higher Education Academy
- External Examiner, University of the Highlands and Islands
- Convener of Burns Scotland's Research Sub-Group
- Council Member, Association of Scottish Literary Studies
- General Editor, Rodopi/Brill's Scottish Cultural Review of Language and Literature (SCROLL) series
- Treasurer, Universities Committee for Scottish Literature
- Reviews Editor, Scottish Literary Review (2008-2013)
- Secretary, International Association of Scottish Literatures (2014-16)
- Head of Subject Area, Scottish Literature (2014-17)
- Deputy Dean of Graduate Studies, College of Arts (2015-17)
- Secretary, International Association for the Study of Scottish Literatures (2014-17)
