Professor Katharine Murphy

Katharine Murphy is Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies and Comparative Literature, specialising in early twentieth-century Spanish literary Modernism. She holds an AHRC RD&E Fellowship on 'Reading Bodies: Narrating Illness in Spanish and European Literatures and Cultures 1870s to 1960s' (AH/X01133X/1) (2023-2025), for which she is conducting research on illness and the body in Spanish literary fiction. More information about this project can be found in Katharine's article (2024) for the Multilingual Medical Humanities series of The Polyhony. An extended Reading Bodies special issue of the Journal of Romance Studies 25.3 (2025) is now published, with open access Introduction and ten articles on illness narratives in literature and visual culture across four language areas: Hispanic, French, Italian and Portuguese Studies. The project aims to demonstrate the value of a cross-cultural, interdisciplinary and multilingual approach to the medical humanities field. 

Katharine has published two monographs, and is currently preparing a book on Images of Illness in Spanish Fiction: Sick Literature from 1900 to 1955 for publication in Boydell and Brewer's Monografías series. Her second book Bodies of Disorder: Gender and Degeneration in Baroja and Blasco Ibáñez (2017) was published by Legenda's Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures. The book analyses the ways in which late nineteenth-century medical discourses and cultural myths of degeneration were both assimilated and reframed in the works of two Spanish authors. Her first book, Re-reading Pío Baroja and English Literature (2004), applied a comparative approach to early twentieth-century Spanish and English prose fiction in order to highlight the central participation of Baroja and other Spanish authors in the development of European Modernism.

Prof. Katharine Murphy has been awarded Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy, in recognition of her work on internationalisation, diversity and inclusion in Postgraduate Taught studies. She has extensive leadership experience, including Senior Academic Leader in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures (2021-2023), Director of the MA in Global Literatures and Cultures (2021-2023 and 2018), Senior Tutor for Modern Languages (2018-2021), Internationalisation Officer for Modern Languages (2018), and Programme Director in Hispanic Studies (2013-2016; 2022). She was an External Examiner for the Department of HiPLA Studies at the University of Bristol (2018-2022).

Research supervision:

Katharine welcomes enquires about postgraduate supervision in the following areas: Spanish and European Modernism; Comparative Literature (particularly early-twentieth-century Spanish and English novels); Spain and the fin de siglo; gender and feminism in Spanish literature; Spanish women's writing; Naturalism and the body; post-war Spanish fiction.