Cultures of the Sea: A Research Conversation between Philip Hoare, Stephanie Jones, and Matt Kerr. Seminar

Speaker Information

Philip Hoare is a Professorial Fellow in English at the University of Southampton. His books—which have featured on best-seller lists in the UK and USA, and are published in translation in Russia, China, Spain, Portugal, Germany and Italy—include biographies of Stephen Tennant and Noël Coward, Wilde's Last Stand, England's Lost Eden, and Spike Island.  Leviathan or, the Whale won the 2009 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction in 2009, was followed by The Sea Inside and RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR, both serialised as BBC Radio 4 books of the week. His broadcast work includes the feature-length BBC 2 film, The Hunt for Moby-Dick, and three films he directed for BBC 4's Whale Night. During the 1980s he was founder of the post-punk record label, Operation Twilight, with Rough Trade Records, and he co-curated Icons of Pop at the National Portrait Gallery, one of the institution's best-attended exhibitions. He has collaborated with Pet Shop Boys, John Waters, and the Black American artist Ellen Gallagher; recent work includes I was a dark star always (2018), an installation film about Wilfred Owen, voiced by Ben Whishaw, for the John Hansard Gallery. He is currently working with the gallery on an exhibition on the artist and film-maker, Derek Jarman. Working with the artist Angela Cockayne and the Arts Institute, University of Plymouth, Philip co-curated the Moby Dick Big Read, for which the entirety of Melville's novel was read by Sir David Attenborough, Tilda Swinton, Benedict Cumberbatch, Stephen Fry, Fiona Shaw, among others; and the Ancient Mariner Big Read, in which Coleridge's poem was read by Iggy Pop, Hilary Mantel, Willem Dafoe, Simon Armitage, Beth Gibbons, Jeanette Winterson, Rupert Everett, Ali Smith, Alan Bennett, Robert Macfarlane, Jeremy Irons, Marianne Faithfull, and Lemn Sissay, among others. Both digital projects have received millions of hits.   His latest book, published in March 2021, is Albert & the Whale, a study of the Renaissance artist, Albrecht Durer.  Reviewing it, the New York Times declared the author's imagination to be a 'forceful weather system'.  An experienced broadcaster, Philip is a regular contributor to The Guardian and numerous other publications. He is Special Ambassador to Whale and Dolphin Conservation, and swims every day in the sea.

Dr Stephanie Jones is an Associate Professor in English at the University of Southampton. Dr Jones works on literature about marine and maritime worlds, with a particular focus on the Indian Ocean. Her research spans the interdisciplinary fields of postcolonial and decolonial studies, law and literature, and the environmental humanities. Dr Jones has published work on East African law and literature; the poetics and metaphors of international maritime law and lore; fictional and historical piracy and privateering; and literary and legal 'belonging'.

Dr Matt Kerr is a Lecturer in British Literature from 1837 to 1939 at the University of Southampton. His research and teaching centres on Victorian literature and culture, with a particular focus on the sea. His work spans both well-known figures—Charles Dickens, John Stuart Mill, John Ruskin—and neglected ones, such as Captain Marryat. Dr Kerr’s articles have appeared in Essays in Criticism, Review of English Studies, and Dickens Studies Annual, among other places. His monograph The Victorian Novel and the Problems of Marine Language: All at Sea is forthcoming with Oxford University Press.