PGRs at International Virginia Woolf Conference

Final year PhD students Ellie Mitchell and Valery Goutorova presented at the Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, which was held at the University of Sussex at the beginning of July 2025.

In response to the theme of 'Woolf and Dissidence', Ellie's paper presented her work on Woolf's responses to the patriotic and propagandistic popular theatre shows of the First World War. This research explores the contradictions and complexities in Woolf's thinking about nationalism and nationality during this period, and complicates our understanding of Woolf's later statement, "As a woman I have no country".

Valery presented a paper titled '"Monstrously out of place": An Outsider's Reading of Virginia Woolf's Early Journals'. This paper showcased her work on Virginia Woolf's early journals and demonstrated their literary value by highlighting how Woolf's descriptions of everyday life blur the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction. This paper is part of Valery's larger project - queering the Woolfian canon - wherein she examines Woolf's lesser studied texts and reads into their queer elements.