Profile

Helen Victoria Murray is Research Associate in Victorian Cultural and Material History at Lancaster University, where she works on the UKRI-funded project The Victorian Hand: Emotions, Embodiment and Identity, Past and Present.

Helen is an interdisciplinary scholar in Victorian Studies. Her research interests include Image-Text studies, Neo-Victorianism, Photographic History, Pre-Raphaelitism and Thing Theory. She is an experienced heritage professional, passionate about working with archives and museum collections.

In 2023, Helen completed her interdisciplinary PhD, ‘Artists at Home: Self-Representation and Celebrity, 1860-1914’ at University of Surrey. She examined how artists built and maintained fame within the accelerating Victorian media landscape of photography, literature and periodicals. Helen conducted archival research in the Rob Dickins’ Collection at Watts Gallery – Artists’ Village. She investigated over 4000 nineteenth-century photographs, albums, and ephemera relating to artists.

Prior to her work on the Victorian Hand at Lancaster University, Helen worked in Archives and Collections at The Glasgow School of Art. In this role, she developed object-based learning workshops for students and the public, and supported archival research and curatorial activities. She has previously undertaken teaching, research and student-support roles at the Universities of Glasgow, Strathclyde and Surrey.

Helen’s fiction and poetry is published in a range of anthologies, journals and zines. Her creative work unites with her academic research through core themes of temporality, materiality and embodiment.