
Dr Pam Lock
B.A.(Wales), MA
Current positions
Senior Lecturer
Department of English
Contact
Press and media
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Research interests
Pam's research interests focus on 19th Century literature and the history of drink and drinking. Her British Library short story collection, Dead Drunk, was published in 2023. Her first monograph, The Drunkard in Victorian Fiction and Culture is expected from Edinburgh University Press in 2024. Chapters include discussions of the Brontes, Dickens, Eliot, Collins, Ellen Wood, Trollope, and Hardy covering themes such as alcoholism, suicide, medicine, identity, gender and class. Her PhD thesis, on which this book will be based, was sponsored by the Vice-Chancellor's Initiative Fund.
Pam is Co-I on the NCN sponsored project 'Between the Drunken 'Mother of Destruction' and the Sober 'Angel of the House'. Hidden Representations of Women's Drinking in Polish and British Public Discourses in the Second Half of the 19th Century', which was developed and lead with Dr Dorota Dias-Lewandowska from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, Polish Academy of Sciences.
Teaching
Pam Lock teaches on the part time BA in English Literature and Community Engagement and the full-time English BA and oversees the literary short courses programme at Bristol. She currently leads the following units as Unit Coordinator:
- Introduction to Critical Theory and Thought (Year 1, ELCE)
- The Short Story (Year 2, ELCE)
- Drinking in the Words (Year 2, full-time BA)
- Period Unit 3, 1785-1900 (Year 5, ELCE)
- Dissertation (Year 6, ELCE; Literature and Community Engagement elements)
She also teaches on the 'Living with Dying' unit for Year 2 medical students in the Faculty of Health Sciences.
In the past, she has taught in the English Literature and History departments as follows:
- Critical Issues (English Literature)
- LRU - Drink: A History (History)
Since 2014, Pam has developed a programme of Writers' Retreats at the University of Bristol (https://writingwithpam.wordpress.com/) for postgraduates and academics.
Other activities
- Pam is one of the co-Directors of the Drinking Studies Network and the co-organiser of the DSN 'Women and Alcohol' research cluster.
- Pam co-leads the Drinking Studies Faculty Research Group with Mark Hailwood (History)
- Pam was Associate Editor for alcohol-related submissions on the Social History of Alcohol and Drugs journal 2021-23.
- Pam worked with Professor Steven Earnshaw, Sheffield Hallam, on a project to digitise the journal Dionysos: the literature and intoxication triquarterly which can now be found in full at <http://teaching.shu.ac.uk/ds/sle/Dionysos.htm>
Projects and supervisions
Research projects
Between the Drunken "Mother of Destruction" and the Sober "Angel of the House". Hidden Representations of Women's Drinking in Polish and British Public Discourses in the Second Half of the 19th Century
Role
Co-Investigator
Description
The project examines and compares female drinking and drunkenness in nineteenth-century British and Polish Cultures. Drs Dias-Lewandowska and Lock will explore the policing of women’s bodies and minds in the…Managing organisational unit
Department of EnglishDates
01/07/2021 to 31/07/2024
Publications
Recent publications
22/12/2024How did investigations into spontaneous human combustion influence alcohol medicine? An examination of the medical and literary discussions that brought the two together
Addiction
Women, Home, and Alcohol
Journal of Victorian Culture
Dead Drunk
Dead Drunk
‘Drinking himself to death’: the chronic drunkard in British mid-Victorian fiction and culture
Routledge Handbook of Intoxicants and Intoxication
Disfigured by Drink: Gothic deformity and extreme drinking in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island
Transgressive Appetites