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The University of Southampton
EnglishPart of HumanitiesPostgraduate study
Email:
Bea.Bennett@soton.ac.uk

Miss Briony Bennett 

Postgraduate research student

Miss Briony Bennett's photo

Miss Briony Bennett is Postgraduate research student within English at the University of Southampton.

My first two degrees were in English. My bachelors was at Surrey and, after completing my MA at Winchester University with a dissertation on quantum mechanical time in T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets, I worked in the private sector at Capita as a Campaign Manager and Motorola as a Design Studio Manager before moving on to the Foreign Office. After having two children I was keen to get back to my interests in interdisciplinary communication and applied to Southampton University because of its great reputation.

I am also a writer and have had my work published by a number of magazines. I was also fortunate enough to be shortlisted for the Bridport prize 2010.

Research interests

I am interested in cross-disciplinary methods of communication, primarily the appropriation of scientific metaphor in the arts and in how artistic expression and the social landscape influence science.

My PhD explores the fertility of  metaphor, its construction and how metaphor can be informed by scientific method.  I am predominantly focused on modern and postmodern poetry, and how scientific ideas are communicated in this form.

Currently I am focusing on the theory of metaphor, trying to understand the linguistic issues raised by its use in contemporary poetry.  I am looking at the poetry of Rae Armantrout and her contemporaries in the light of conceptual metaphor theory and Gilles Fauconnier's work on the compression.  Another key concern of my research is the imagery and metaphor used by science in order to communicate with non-specialists.

I have been involved in a number of cross disciplinary workshops including the Beyond the Gene project, the Litmus project, Ecology and Poetry workshops and participated in the recent Silent Spring conferences.

Miss Briony Bennett
Faculty of Arts and Humanities University of Southampton Avenue Campus Highfield Southampton SO17 1BF United Kingdom

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