Dr Helen Victoria Murray is Research Associate in Victorian Cultural and Material History at Lancaster University, where she works on The Victorian Hand: Emotions, Embodiment and Identity, Past and Present.
Helen is an interdisciplinary scholar in Victorian Studies. In 2023, she completed her 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, investigating over 4,000 nineteenth-century photographs, albums, and ephemera relating to artists.
Helen is an experienced heritage professional, passionate about working with archives and museum collections. She has previously 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.
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.
