Joanna was awarded an honorary three-year visiting fellowship in 2026 for her groundbreaking research into the early life and publishing career of Marie Corelli (1854-1924): this work was conducted during Joanna’s time as a PhD researcher in the School of English, where she was the recipient of a Loughborough University Doctoral College Fee Studentship.
In 2024 Joanna co-convened an international conference with Dr Eleanor Dobson of the University of Birmingham to commemorate Corelli’s centenary (which won Joanna a Loughborough University School of Social Sciences and Humanities PhD Award for ‘Best Academic Event’). In 2025, Joanna co-edited a journal special issue on Corelli with Eleanor Dobson, and 2026 saw the publication of her monograph, Marie Corelli. Joanna has published several articles revealing her research discoveries (this leading to her being shortlisted for the 2025 Loughborough University PhD Award for Outstanding Contribution to Knowledge).
Academic Career
- Visiting Fellow in Victorian Literature, Loughborough University, July 2026-June 2029
- PhD English Literature, Loughborough University (Thesis: ‘Reimagining Marie Corelli (1854–1924): Self-construction, Charles Dickens, and Literary Lineage’), awarded 2025
- MA Victorian Studies with Merit, University of Leicester, awarded 2017
- BA (Hons) English Literature, First Class, Open University, awarded 2014
Joanna has taught on the first-year undergraduate module ‘Theory Matters: Critiquing Inequalities’, the third-year module ‘Adapting Shakespeare’, and she has delivered a recurring guest-lecture and workshop for the third-year module ‘Radicals and Reactionaries: Writing Women in the 1890s’ on her specialism of Marie Corelli. Joanna is an editorial assistant for Victoriographies: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century Writing, 1790-1914.
Joanna’s research interests span popular literature of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, periodical publishing, and book history, with her having particular focus on fin-de- siècle bestsellers and pre-war popular culture. Joanna has conducted attribution research using archival and digital methods, and she is interested the application of academic biography and genealogical research as a means to reappraise the lives of nineteenth-century authors. Joanna is a world-leading expert in the life and work of Marie Corelli (1854-1924).
Current Projects
Joanna is co-editing a collection of essays on Corelli with Dr Eleanor Dobson of the University of Birmingham. With a focus on cultural currency, the volume examines Corelli’s interactions with the literary marketplace, and Joanna is contributing a chapter which explores Corelli’s contrivance of authorly association to Charles Dickens (forthcoming with Edinburgh University Press, 2027). Joanna is also writing on Corelli’s professional and personal dealings with her contemporary, Ouida (1839-1908), for an edited collection with Ohio University Press (forthcoming 2027), and she is at the beginning of a project collaborating with Prof. Sarah Parker on Corelli’s recently discovered early poetry.
Professional Memberships
- Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing
- British Society for Literature and Science
- English Association
- Victorian Popular Fiction Association
- Research Society for Victorian Periodicals
- Society of Genealogists.
Book
- Marie Corelli, Key Popular Women Writer’s Series Number 8 (Edward Everett Root, 2026)
Journal Special Issue
- Marie Corelli, Reconsidered. Victoriographies 15.3 (2025) co-edited with Dr Eleanor Dobson). 10.3366/vic.2025.0578
Articles
- ‘Twin Souls, Twin Pens: Marie Corelli, Charles Mackay and the Authorship of The Twin Soul (1887)’ with Eleanor Dobson in Marie Corelli, Reconsidered: A Special Issue of Victoriographies, 15.3 (2025), pp. 239–63 10.3366/vic.2025.0581
- ‘Rosalind and The Countess: The Newly Discovered Poetry of Marie Corelli (1854-1924)’, in Notes and Queries, 71.3 (2024), pp. 348–50. 10.1093/notes/gjae061
- ‘Some Corrections to the Periodical Publishing History of Marie Corelli (1854-1924)’, in Notes and Queries, 70.4 (2023), pp. 305–6. 10.1093/notesj/gjad075
- ‘Making a Name for Herself: Marie Corelli’s Self-Guided Literary Apprenticeship Via the Periodical Press’, in Victorian Periodicals Review, 56.1 (2023), pp. 110–32. 10.1353/vpr.2023.a905142
- “‘The most accomplished liar in literature’? Uncovering Marie Corelli’s Hidden Early Life”, in Victorian Popular Fictions, 5.1 (2023), pp. 21-36. (online) 10.46911/CWXJ9793
Reference Work Entries
- ‘A Romance of Two Worlds (Corelli, Marie)’ and ‘The Sorrows of Satan (Corelli, Marie)’, in The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Victorian Women's Writing ed. by Lesa Scholl (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan). 10.1007/978-3-030-02721-6_365-1 and 10.1007/978-3-030-02721-6_348-1