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Writer and editor returns to the University for a research project on the modern ruin

Brian Dillon, currently the UK editor of the New York based cultural magazine Cabinet and a contributing editor at Art Review, is to return to the University of Kent's School of English for a research project titled Ruins of the Twentieth Century.

His project, which has been enabled by a £212,914 Creative and Performing Arts Fellowship from the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC), will involve research into such twentieth-century ruins as ex-industrial sites, former military installations, derelict hospitals and abandoned relics of Modernist architecture.

A study of the relationship between place, architecture and creative writing, the project will produce two books and an exhibition at a major London gallery. Some of Brian Dillon's chosen sites will be in Kent, where he has lived since 1995. This summer, the literary magazine Granta will publish his essay on the remains of the old BP refinery on the Isle of Grain, in the north of the county.

Brian Dillon completed his PhD in the School of English in 1999 and was a sessional teacher in the department for several years. Alongside his editorial roles, he continues to work as a freelance writer and critic, contributing regularly to publications such as The London Review of Books, The Dublin Review and The New Statesman. In 2005 he won the Irish Book Award for Non-Fiction for his book In the Dark Room (Penguin). His second book, Tormented Hope: Nine Hypochondriac Lives, will be published in 2009.

Rod Edmond, Professor of Modern Literature and Cultural History, and Head of the School of English, has welcomed his return by saying: 'Brian Dillon is a very talented writer and one of the School's most outstanding graduates, and we are delighted to be hosting his award. Brian's project is a perfect example of the dialogue between the critical and the creative that the School of English prides itself on fostering.'

The School of English is one of the University of Kent's most successful research and teaching departments. Its published authors include Scarlett Thomas, whose novel The End of Mr. Y was recently longlisted for the 2008 Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction, Susan Wicks, Patricia Debney, Lucy Ellmann and Todd McEwen. Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah, Professor of English and Postcolonial Literatures at the School, was previously shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

Its alumni includes authors Kazuo Ishiguro (Never Let Me Go, When We Were Orphans, The Unconsoled, The Remains of the Day), Sarah Waters (The Night Watch, Affinity, Fingersmith, Tipping the Velvet) and David Mitchell (Black Swan Green, Cloud Atlas, Number9dream, Ghostwritten).

Contact: mediaoffice@kent.ac.uk

Story published at 11:38am 15 May 2008