Roseanna Kettle

Visiting Early Career Research Fellow 2024/2025

Roseanna is an early career researcher specialising in eighteenth- and nineteenth- century literature concerning British industrialisation and urbanisation. She received her doctorate from the University of York in 2024, and her thesis discussed the poetry of industrialism produced in the growing cities of Manchester, Liverpool, and Sheffield from 1770 to 1842.

Her recent research explores early depictions of light pollution, as related to industry and urbanism, from 1750 to 1850. Using the Rylands' collections of travel literature, industrial and scientific discourses, poetry, and visual materials, she will demonstrate the pre-modern range of emotional reactions expressed in relation to anthropogenic light, and question how much the negative impacts of this phenomenon were recognised and understood by contemporary commentators.