Thomas Bailey

PhD student

Research Overview

My primary areas of research are narratology (the study of narrative) and reader-response theory, focusing in particular on readerly immersion: how this is prompted by the text and maintained via imagination.

My research offers a model by which to conceptualise this process by synthesising the philosophical work of reader-response critics with contemporary research in the field of cognitive science.

The cognitive focus of my work allows for interdisciplinary collaborations across a range of fields, but particularly with psychology.

Profile

Thomas Bailey, MA, BA (Hons) is a postgraduate researcher within the School of Arts at Lancaster University. He is a traditional route PhD student, working in Literary Studies and its associated fields.

He first came to Lancaster in 2021, studying a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in English Literature, Creative Writing, and Practice, from which he graduated with a high first-class degree. In 2024, he commenced a Master's Degree in English Literary Studies with Creative Writing and was awarded a Distinction (80%). He began his doctoral studies in October 2025, for which his maximum completion date is December 2031.

* * *

During my time at Lancaster, I have been involved in a wide range of projects. In addition to participating in and organising numerous workshops and seminars across a wide range of disciplines, I have also delivered papers at a number of conferences and symposiums (2022–present):

English Literature Open Seminar – Speaker (2023).
The Tolkien Seminar – Speaker/Organiser (2024).
The Creative Writing Praxis MA Panel – Speaker (2024).
English Literature and Creative Writing MA Castle Seminar – Speaker (2025).
Errant & CounterText at The Castle: Symposium of Postcriticism – Speaker (2025).
The Castle Master's Annual Symposium – Organiser/Speaker (2025).
The Value of Literature Conference – Speaker (2025).

Since 2024, I have worked as a Research Assistant on the impact and outreach project, Litcraft (2024–present). Initially, my work pertained to social media strategy and analysis, culminating in a number of written reports to guide the development of the project as a social enterprise. More recently, as of summer 2025, I have branched out and acquired teaching experience by assisting the project to deliver its impact aims: namely, delivering educational sessions to school-aged children in libraries around Cumbria and rural Lancashire.

Current Research

In my current PhD research, I apply my proposed conceptual model for the study of immersion to biblical literature of the sixteenth-century, connecting my work on immersion with the term’s roots in a Christian-religious context.

Beyond my doctoral studies, I plan to undertake a series of studies moving from the sixteenth-century to the contemporary period, in an effort to understand how the concept of immersion – its experience for readers as well as its perception – has changed across time.

Supervised By

Professor Sally Bushell (75%)

Dr Clare Egan (25%)

Additional Information

Affiliations

Lancaster University
School of Arts
Faculty of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (FHASS)
Postgraduate Research Hub
Graduate College
Department of English Literature and Creative Writing (formerly)
Cartmel College (formerly)

Publications
Activities

The Value of Literature Conference (VOLC)
Participation in conference - Academic

Subversions
Participation in conference - Academic

Creative Writing as Research
Symposium

Shakespeare at The Castle
Festival/Exhibition/Concert

Presenting Conference Papers
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

Cannibal Imaginaries: A Media, Gender, and Bodies Research Workshop
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

Writing for Publication
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

Coastal Research and Practice Study Day
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Inside Publishing
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

The Analysis of Culture
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

Against Respectability and Identity Politics
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

The Craft of Queer Writing
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

Authors in Conversation: Jenn Ashworth and Richard V. Hirst
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

Enhance Your Online Researcher Profile
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

Critical Theory for Postgraduate Researchers
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

Castle Seminar: Writing History with Philippa Gregory
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Making your research articles open access
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

Annual Grasmere Research Day
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Horror Workshop
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Castle Saturday Symposium: Time, Law, and Literature
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

The Cathedral Seminar: Literature, God, and the North
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

Thesis Writing
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

The Priory Seminar: Literature, God, and Place
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

Designing, Undertaking, and Surviving Doctoral Research
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

Writing and/as Radical Hospitality
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

Introduction to the Library and Literature Searching
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

The University and the Humanities
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

The PhD Castle Seminar
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Doctorate of Philosophy (PhD), English Literature
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Research Training Programme (RTP)
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Postgraduate Approaches to Writing
Participation in conference - Academic

Postgraduate Approaches to Writing
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Stories that Connect
Oral presentation

Crafting Inclusive Academic and Professional Practice through Zines
Oral presentation

Open Research: What's In It For Me?
Oral presentation

How can we inspire PGR Communities?: Co-designing an open source to support building community
Oral presentation

Research Culture Week 2025
Participation in conference - Academic

A Sector, Institutional, and Faculty Overview
Oral presentation

Illuminating Arts in Research: Developing a Collaborative Model for Researcher-Artist Partnerships
Oral presentation

Value of Literature Conference (Event)
Other Membership

Litcraft Wordsworth Trust Festival
Invited talk

The Value of Literature Conference (VOLC)
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Writers on the Lune (External organisation)
Member of external research organisation

Litcraft: Walking the Lakes
Types of Public engagement and outreach - Festival/Exhibition

MA Creative Writing Anthology Launch Event
Festival/Exhibition/Concert

Castle Summer Seminar Series
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

The Castle Annual Symposium
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Litcraft in Cumbrian Libraries
Festival/Exhibition/Concert

Creative Criticism
Participation in conference - Academic

Castle Summer Seminar Series
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Imaginary Friends
Festival/Exhibition/Concert

Poetry Writing Workshop
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Muldoon Poetry Reading
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

British Society for Literature and Science (BSLS) Conference
Participation in conference - Academic

Discriminations: Making Peace in the Culture Wars
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

Testimony and Trinity: Derrida and Macdonald
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

The Queer Fantastic
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

English Literature and Creative Writing Roundtable Discussion
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Creative Writing MA Panel
Other

Trust and Community with Other than Human Beings
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

The Graphic Novel and Political Activism
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

English Literature and Creative Writing Master's Castle Seminar
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Shakespeare's Soilscape Tragedies
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

Postgraduate Seminar: Literature, Film and the More-than-Human
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

An Austentatious Display of Genius
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

New Year, New World?
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Politics and The Poetic
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

Poetry Workshop
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

The Contemporary Short Story
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

The Manhunt Narrative
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

100 Years of Vampire Films: From Nosferatu to Bram Stoker's Dracula
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

The Radical 60s at Lancaster: Student Activism, "1968", and the Craig Affair(s)
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

Ezra Pound's "Malatesta Cantos" and The Renaissance Recovery of Paganism
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

Postcritical Symposium
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

The Manhunt Narrative
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

The Planetary Turn in the Arts and Humanities
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

Politics and the Image
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

Lubitsch and Shakespeare on Hyper-Theatricality: Between Metaphysics and Politics
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

Literature and Religion Reading Group
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Errant Castle Symposium
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

In Conversation with A. K. Blakemore
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

Wordsworth, Romanticism, and The Lakes
Other

Department of English Literature and Creative Writing: 60th Anniversary Exhibition
Festival/Exhibition/Concert

A Dress for Kathleen
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

Tolkien Seminar
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Politics and the Planetary
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

Otherness, Hybridity, and Metaphors of Mixedness in "Superman"
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

Civil Religion and Public Happiness
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

On Writing for Young People
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Literature and Religion Lecture
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

King Lear's Mute
Festival/Exhibition/Concert

Ancient Theology and the Ideological Roots of the Modern State in Renaissance Florence
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

Reading Chronicity, Translating Temporalities
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

The Personal Essay
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Research and Professional Practice in Creative Writing
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Research Methodology and Reflective Practice in English Literature
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Nineteenth Century Literature
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

MA English Literary Studies Dissertation
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Postgraduate Approaches to Writing
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

British Association for Victorian Studies Conference (BAVS)
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Adventures in Time, Space, and Books: Dr Who and Literature
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

Errant Issue 3
Festival/Exhibition/Concert

Sir Humphry Davy's Notebooks
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

MA Literary Studies Conference
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Meeting Margaret Fell
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

FASS Research Talk
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Litcraft Educational Resource (External organisation)
Member of external research organisation

English Literature and Creative Writing Shakespeare Symposium
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Contemporary Literature
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

English Literature and Creative Writing Student Castle Seminar Series
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

How to Read a Poem
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson: The 100th Anniversary
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

English Literature and Creative Writing International Conference
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

The Daphne Project
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

English Literature and Creative Writing Annual Castle Symposium
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Creative Writer's Symposium
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Poetry
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Longer Fiction
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

21st-Century Theory
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

AI Review Group (Event)
Membership of committee

Class, Place, and the Victorian Novel
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

English Literature and Creative Writing Open Theology Seminar Series
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Annual Literature and Religion Seminar
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Jane Austen
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Advanced Creative Writing
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Advanced Short Story
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

English Literature Dissertation
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

LUX: Undergraduate Journal of Literature and Culture (Journal)
Editorial activity

LUX Pre-Launch Reception
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Materials in Movement
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

English Literature and Creative Writing Open Theology Seminar Series
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Short Fiction
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

The Theory and Practice of Criticism
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

British Romanticism
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Intermediate Creative Writing
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Literature in Crisis
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

World Literature
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Creative Writing
Participation in workshop, seminar, course