Dr Andrew Griffiths

Professional biography

I have taught for the OU since 2009 and have also taught at the universities of Exeter and Plymouth, specialising in Victorian Literature. A revised version of my doctoral thesis was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2015 under the title The New Journalism, the New Imperialism and the Fiction of Empire, 1870-1900.

Research interests

My major research focus is on the relationship between literature and journalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. My monograph, The New Journalism, the New Imperialism and the Fiction of Empire (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), explored the ways in which fiction and journalism combined to produce a distinctive discourse of empire in the final quarter of the nineteenth century, paying particular attention to the role of the special correspondent in that process. 

My current book project reassesses the work of Britain's war correspondents during the First World War. Previous projects have examined masculinity, madness and empire, as well as the circulation of news within the British Empire before 1900. I have published on writers and journalists including Henry Rider Haggard, Joseph Conrad, G.A. Henty, Rudyard Kipling, George Warrington Steevens, W.T. Stead, Archibald Forbes and Winston Churchill. 

Teaching interests

My main teaching interests are in nineteenth-century literature and popular culture, the history and culture of empires and war writing. Recent contributions to OU module materials include editing a block on Literature, Power and Politics for the module A240, and producing teaching materials on George Orwell and Mary Elizabeth Braddon. 

I would be delighted to supervise PhD projects on empire and popular culture, literary journalism and writing about conflict.