DrSophie Franklin

Dr Sophie Franklin is a DOROTHY MSCA COFUND postdoctoral researcher in the School of English, Drama, and Film. Her research specialises in nineteenth-century literature and culture with specific emphasis on representations of violence, the Brontës, and cultural afterlives. Much of her work is underpinned by an interest in the shifting understandings, perceptions, and depictions of violence throughout literary history, particularly how people write (about) violence.

Her current DOROTHY COFUND project, 'Violence as Contagious: Historicising Anglophone Narratives of Violence, Health, and Disease, 1800s to the Present', traces the "violence as contagious" narrative to the long nineteenth century to establish a clearer historicisation of the phenomenon and to demonstrate how literary strategies contribute to the ongoing implementation of public health approaches to violence. Building on Ivan Perry’s (2009) public health theory of violence, the project offers an original literary approach to historical and ongoing conceptualisations of violence and health, specifically by illuminating the expansive possibilities and potential limitations of the "violence as contagious" narrative. As part of the project, Sophie was based at the University of Reading from April 2024 to September 2025 and is now completing her fellowship at UCD from October 2025. 

Sophie received her PhD from Durham University in 2019 and has since taught at several institutions across the UK and Germany, including LMU Munich, the University of Tübingen, Nottingham Trent University, and Newcastle University. Her first monograph, Violence and the Brontës: Language, Reception, Afterlives, was published in 2025 with Edinburgh University Press. Alongside Arya Thampuran, Hannah Piercy, and Rebecca White, she co-edited a collection of essays, Consent: Legacies, Representations, and Frameworks for the Future (Routledge, 2023). She also co-edited a special issue of Brontë Studies with Claire O'Callaghan on the role of coarseness in relation to the Brontë family, published in 2019. Other publications have appeared in Neo-Victorian Studies and the Journal of Victorian Culture. She is currently an Associate Editor of the Brontë Studies journal. With Lara Ehrenfried and Nikolina Hatton, Sophie also recently co-founded the Women Writing Violence Network, which brings together international researchers at all career stages working across all literary genres and literary eras within an English-language context on the subject of women writing (about) violence. The network organises regular online events and all are welcome to join! 

Sophie has a keen interest in public engagement, having given numerous public talks at book festivals and beyond on the Brontë family. She is the author of Charlotte Brontë Revisited: A View from the Twenty-First Century, which is part of a book series on the Brontë sisters published by Saraband. She has also appeared on RTÉ's Arena programme, as well as Newstalk's Talking History podcast, to talk about Emily Brontë and Wuthering Heights following the release of Emerald Fennell's adaptation of the novel. As part of her current work on the treatment of violence as a disease, she is organising public engagement events on the role of storytelling and narrative in health-based approaches to violent behaviour.