Current PhD Students

Caroline Anjali Ritchie

Thesis Title:

Visionary mapping in the work of William Blake

Supervisors:

Professor Jon Mee & Dr Amy Concannon (Curator, British Art 1790–1850, Tate)

Description:

My research relates the work of William Blake (1757–1827) to the history and theory of mapping. I situate Blake within networks of people and places, with a view to characterising him as both a cautious participant in and a canny critic of contemporaneous mapping practices. The research also traces the legacy of Blake’s contradictorily (anti-)cartographic imagination as it is evoked in creative responses to his work up to the present day. The research is interdisciplinary, spanning the fields of literary, intellectual, and art history as well as cultural geography. It also seeks to inform adjacent activities at Tate Britain.

Broadly, my research interests include mapping, psychogeography, cities, networks, radicalism, counterculture, the ‘British Poetry Revival,’ and independent publishing. I also write poetry, which has appeared in Culture Matters and New River Press (forthcoming), and contribute to Zoamorphosis, a blog focusing on the ‘afterlives’ of William Blake up to the present day.