OGOM PhD Success

Congratulations to OGOM Doctoral Student Shabnam Ahsan, @thebrownbronte, who has passed her PhD Viva. I was Shabnam’s primary supervisor. Her thesis, ‘Strange Creatures: National Identity and the Representation of the Other in British Fairy-tale Collections, 1878-Present’ is an excellent contribution to the field of fairy tale studies and national identity. She has been given advice on publishing a monograph from it from her examiners Dr Rowland Hughes of the University of Hertfordshire and Dr Paul Quinn, Director of the Chichester Centre for Fairy Tales, Fantasy and Speculative Fiction – University of Chichester and Editor of the Centre’s journal Gramarye. One of the stand out aspects of Shabnam’s thesis, apart from her work on Indian Fairy Tales, has been her research on Ruth Manning-Sanders. Some of you may have seen her presenting on Manning-Sanders’s Book of Mermaids at our recent Sea Changes Mermaid Conference 2025. Shabnam received a bursary from the Literature Group at the University of Hertfordshire. She developed her research under OGOM and will remain a valued member of the team. She is currently teaching creative writing and writing an essay for OGOM’S Gothic Encounters with Enchantment and the Faerie Realm in Literature and Culture: ‘Ill met by moonlight’ (forthcoming from MUP). Shabnam is the second of our PhD students to complete this year, after the success of Dr Daisy Butcher. Congratulations Daisy. You can view OGOM’s Doctoral Student’s on OGOM People (new students for 2005/6 Silas and Alex to be added soon). Well done, Dr Ahsan. Your project was a joy to supervise!