Skip to main content
Rowan-BoysonKCL Arts Hums Headshots-38

Dr Rowan Rose Boyson

Reader in Eighteenth-Century and Romantic Literature

  • Environmental Humanities Network

Research interests

  • Literature

Biography

Biography

I was born in Yorkshire and grew up in Essex, where I went to a grammar (state) school. I studied at Cambridge for my BA and MPhil, before travelling to America to study as a Knox Fellow at Harvard University. I returned to London, where my PhD, entitled ‘Communis Voluptas: Pleasure in Wordsworth and Eighteenth-Century Thought’, was supervised by Professor Paul Hamilton at Queen Mary, University of London and awarded in 2008. I taught at Queen Mary and at London Metropolitan before being elected as a Junior Research Fellow at King’s College, Cambridge in 2009, where I worked on my first monograph. In 2012 I was appointed Lecturer at KCL, and made Senior Lecturer in 2016. I have two young children.

Research Interests and PhD Supervision

  • Environmental humanities, air and atmosphere
  • History of the senses
  • Eighteenth-century and Romantic poetry, especially Wordsworth and Shelley
  • History of philosophy and political thought, especially Shaftesbury, Rousseau, Kant and Wollstonecraft
  • Critical theory and aesthetics

My current project is provisionally entitled The Shared Air: Atmosphere and the Right to Breathe in Enlightenment Britain, and I was awarded a Leverhulme Research Fellowship (2021-22) to work on this. The Shared Air offers a history of how writers and scientists from 1640-1840 debated the political implications of air. Usually invisible and seemingly immaterial, air often goes unnoticed, yet when it is apprehended – as scent, freshness or pollution - air is recognised as a common resource and a symbol of freedom. In this symbol lies a nascent concept of a right to clean air, and its inescapably shared nature. This topic emerged from my previous work on smell and the history of the senses in eighteenth-century and Romantic literature, as well as my first monograph on the philosophy of shared pleasure in the eighteenth century. I am also interested in the history and experience of anosmia, and have recently been awarded King’s Together funding to set up an interdisciplinary network and series of events entitled ‘Anosmia: Smell Losses / Smell Lessons’, which will consider anosmia in the context of the industrial revolution, modern air pollution, and Covid.

For full details, please see her research profile.

Selected Publications

  • ‘Mary Wollstonecraft and the Right to Air’, Romanticism 27: 2 (2021), 173-186
  • ‘Rousseau's Boat: The 'Fifth Walk', Romanticism and Idleness, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and British Romanticism, ed. Russell Goulbourne, David Higgin (Bloomsbury, 2017), 167-186
  • ‘Shelley’s Republic of Odours: Aesthetic and political dimensions of scent in “The Sensitive-Plant”’, Keats-Shelley Review, 27: 2, (2013) 105–20
  • With Tom Jones, ed., The Poetic Enlightenment: Poetry and Human Science, 1650-1820 (Pickering and Chatto, 2013)
  • Wordsworth and the Enlightenment Idea of Pleasure (CUP, 2012), winner of the 2013 College English prize.

Teaching

I contribute to all our eighteenth-century and Romantic teaching, including the history of the novel and the Godwin-Shelley circle, as well as lecturing on introductory modules on poetry and London writing. Research-led teaching at level 6 and 7 has included modules on eighteenth-century and contemporary theories of economy, work and idleness, the senses and lyric poetry, and eco-critical and Anthropocene approaches to nineteenth-century literature. MA modules I have offered have included poetry and poetics from 1660-1800, London literature, and women Romantic writers. I regularly convene the MA in Eighteenth-Century Studies and have curated clusters of sessions on Critical Enlightenments.

Expertise and Public Engagement

I have experience of public engagement and media, for instance working with artist Caroline Wendling on a smell tour of Cambridge and speaking at fragrance expert Lizzie Ostrom’s perfume events, as well as contributing to a Radio 4 documentary on echoes. I am on the advisory board of ODEUROPA.

    Research

    Screenshot 2022-09-02 at 09.04.25
    Anosmia in Culture and History: Smell Losses/Smell Lessons

    A King’s Together-funded multidisciplinary project bringing together researchers from within King’s and beyond to create a unique dialogue around smell loss.

    Project status: Starting

    News

    Environmental Humanities Network launched to address ‘planetary wellbeing'

    The Faculty of Arts and Humanities has launched the Environmental Humanities Network aimed at ‘addressing the past and future of the Anthropocene'.

    environmental-humanities-network-hero

    Dr Rowan Boyson comments on the use of echo in compositions and sound design in BBC Radio 4 Interview

    Dr Rowan Boyson comments on the use of echo in compositions and sound design in BBC Radio 4 Interview

    King's College London

    Third year BA English student wins Create: Art for Autism award

    Jonathan Andrews, a third year BA English Language and Literature student, was winner of the People's Choice Award

      Research

      Screenshot 2022-09-02 at 09.04.25
      Anosmia in Culture and History: Smell Losses/Smell Lessons

      A King’s Together-funded multidisciplinary project bringing together researchers from within King’s and beyond to create a unique dialogue around smell loss.

      Project status: Starting

      News

      Environmental Humanities Network launched to address ‘planetary wellbeing'

      The Faculty of Arts and Humanities has launched the Environmental Humanities Network aimed at ‘addressing the past and future of the Anthropocene'.

      environmental-humanities-network-hero

      Dr Rowan Boyson comments on the use of echo in compositions and sound design in BBC Radio 4 Interview

      Dr Rowan Boyson comments on the use of echo in compositions and sound design in BBC Radio 4 Interview

      King's College London

      Third year BA English student wins Create: Art for Autism award

      Jonathan Andrews, a third year BA English Language and Literature student, was winner of the People's Choice Award