top of page
Flying Books

Meet the team

Romance Reading Group is run by these English Literature University of Birmingham PhD researchers...

Meet the Team: Team Members
image edited.jpg

Charlotte Ireland

Charlotte’s research focuses on the diversifying, politicising and maturing of Anglophone chick lit alongside changing feminist ideologies and genre fluidity. She compares 1990s precursor, popular chick lit novels with newer works in the franchise, exploring to what extent chick lit themes have adapted as the protagonist has matured and feminist theories have shifted. She also compares these precursor works with new emerging women writers, identifying a new strand of genre fluid, diverse, fourth-wave feminist “chick lit.” Charlotte’s research not only demonstrates chick lit’s value in being zeitgeist and political, but also highlights discriminations experienced by women due to their gender, age, race, ethnicity and/or sexual orientation.

Evdokia Valiou

Evdokia Valiou

My PhD focuses on representations of the female body in Paranormal, Sci-fi/Fantasy, and Big Beautiful Woman romances. The rise of ecoconsciousness, developments in artificial intelligence and the body positivity movement have shifted our attitudes towards the female body vis-a-vis an animal, an artificial or an idealized counterpart, and revealed desires and anxieties over the boundaries and definitions of that body. By using close reading and critical-theoretical analysis, as well social sciences methodologies, I aim to explore how these desires and anxieties flow between authors, texts and readers.

Contact Evdokia
bottom of page