Dr Melanie Ord

My research centres mainly on early modern travel. My monograph, entitled Travel and Experience in Early Modern English Literature (London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), examines the place occupied by travel in the wide-ranging cultural debate between theoretical and experiential forms of learning in the sixteenth- and seventeenth centuries. Other strands of my research focus on early modern pedagogy, diplomacy, national identity, memorialisation, and life writing, and articles and chapters in these areas have appeared in journals and edited collections. I have presented my work at several conferences in the U.K., Canada, and the U.S. My current project focuses on how travel figures in relation to health and wellbeing in early modern writing.

 I am open to enquiries about doctoral supervision. I am interested in supervising PhDs in any aspect of early modern prose, and particularly in the following areas: travel writing, humanism, life writing, the history of reading, and the medical humanities. PhD applicants should consider the South, West & Wales Doctoral Training Partnership, which competitively funds projects to be co-supervised across two institutions. I am happy to work with applicants to strengthen their bids for this funding.