Gill Plain

I'm a literary historian with a long-term interest in feminism and gender studies. My areas of specialism are British mid-twentieth-century culture (including film), war writing, and crime fiction. My published research has ranged from First World War Women's poetry to British cinema stardom; from the literature of the 1940s to contemporary crime writing; from Agatha Christie to Ian Rankin; from feminist literary criticism to cultures of man-making and the writing of disability in the aftermath of World War Two. I have published six single-authored books and five edited collections. My most recent monograph is 'Prosthetic Agency: Literature, Culture and Masculinity in the Aftermath of World War Two' (Cambridge University Press, 2023). My next book, 'Agatha Christie: A Very Short Introduction' is due out in July 2025.

Career in brief: my undergraduate degree at Cambridge was in History and English. My PhD at Newcastle was on women's writing of the Second World War. My first academic job was at the University of Glamorgan (1993-1998); I have worked at St Andrews since 1998, becoming Professor in 2006. I teach 20th-century literature, film and popular culture, focusing in particular on the period 1930-1960; crime fiction from 1900 to now; feminism and gender studies. I was Head of the School of English 2014-2017.