Dr Caroline Wintersgill

I am Senior Lecturer in Publishing Studies and Programme Director of the MLitt in Publishing. Before coming to Stirling I was Lecturer and Programme Director for the MA in Publishing at University College London (UCL).

I came to academia in 2015, following a 30 year career in the publishing industry, during which I worked for ten companies, including Routledge, Bloomsbury, Cassell, Biteback Publishing, UCL Press, Manchester University Press and the US independent Lynne Rienner. I remain a consultant for Central European University Press and in 2022 I was on the appointments panel for the editorial board of the new Scottish Universities Open Access Press (SUP).

My primary research field is contemporary literary and publishing cultures. I have a BA in English from Newcastle, an MA and a PhD in Contemporary Literature from the University of Winchester, and an MSc in Politics and Sociology from Birkbeck, University of London. My PhD research was on endings in contemporary fiction, combining theoretically informed close readings of a range of contemporary novels, with empirical work among authors, readers and representatives of the literary industry.

I am the reviews editor of Logos: Journal of the World Publishing Community, a board member of The British Association of Contemporary Literary Studies (BACLS) and a Trustee of the Books Council of Wales.

My primary research field is contemporary literary and publishing cultures. My chapter on the ‘Institutions of Fiction’ was published in The Cambridge Companion to British Fiction: 1980 to the Present, edited by P. Boxall (CUP 2019). I am presently completing a monograph, based on my PhD on endings in contemporary fiction which includes interviews with authors, publishers, literary agents and book groups. I am also writing a short book on editing and literary genre for the Cambridge Elements series in Publishing and Book Cultures. My secondary research field is academic publishing, with a particular interest in Open Access debates. My article ‘Open Access, Open Minds: Who Should be the Academic Gatekeepers?’ was published in The Author (Journal of the Society of Authors) in 2014.

I have also written on material and visual cultures in film, co-authoring a chapter with Savithri Bartlett at the University of Winchester on ‘Empowering the Replicant: Visual and Haptic Narratives in Blade Runner’, for The Erotic Cloth: Seduction and Fetishism in Textiles edited by L. Millar and A. Kettle (Bloomsbury 2018).