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
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9996-359XResearch interests
Research Interests
- 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 Deputy 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. 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.
Current Research
Coyer is currently editing James Hogg’s Contributions to Fraser’s Magazine, 1830-1836 (under contract with Edinburgh University Press), as part of the Stirling/South Carolina Research Edition of the Collected Works of James Hogg. Her editorial work has received funding from the University of Glasgow Academic Returners Fund, and is currently funded by a Carnegie Trust Research Incentive Grant.
With Dr Gavin Miller (PI), she is also leading a new medical humanities capacity-building initiative, the ‘Glasgow Medical Humanities Network’. This Wellcome Trust-funded network is bringing together and enhancing medical humanities across universities and collections in the city of Glasgow.
Her primary expertise is in nineteenth-century literature and medical culture, particularly in the Scottish context, and she is currently developing a new medical humanities research project (with funding from the University of Glasgow Academic Returners Fund), provisionally entitled, ‘The Literary Doctor in Victorian and Edwardian Scotland’.
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 am currently supervising PhD projects on: 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 the senior honours course, 'Literature and Medicine', and the Victorian M.Litt. topic course on 'Embodiments', and contribute to the junior honours course, 'Literature, 1780-1840', and pre-honours courses on 'Novels and Narratology' (1B) and 'Writing and Ideology' (2A).
I also contribute to the College of Arts Level 3 course on 'Writing in the Arts and Humanities' and the 'Principia Consortium' course on 'The Scottish Enlightenment'.
