For Professor Lisa Fletcher “Without the Humanities, we cannot truly appreciate our world in all its marvellous and sometimes frightening complexity”.

“We are all looking towards a future that is strange and distant and that we cannot predict. Study and research in the Humanities is essential for making discoveries about our history and contemporary lives, to influence and drive cultural and social change, and envision our potential futures. Studying the Humanities has never been more important than it is today.”

As the Head of our School of Humanities, Professor Fletcher draws on her expertise as a research leader in popular fiction and spatial literary studies internationally to promote a vibrant, exciting Humanities research culture. “We respond to and influence thinking and action about the myriad aspects of human life that our researchers study and teach.”

Her career highlights include teaching with a team of outstanding English and Humanities academics at the University, awards for teaching and learning excellence, the publication of influential books and ground-breaking collaborative research with colleagues from the University of Queensland and University of Melbourne.

“Along with my colleagues in English we were recognised in 2018 by a Vice Chancellor’s Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning. The award cited collaborative, innovative and scholarly teaching practice that improved the student experience and led the culture of learning and teaching in our School and discipline.”

Professor Fletcher’s overarching research passions are in literary studies, with almost all of her work anchored in a deep, life-long interest in books, especially novels.

She is fascinated by how stories are told with text, whether that be through dusty leather-bound tomes hidden in libraries or as files on highly portable Kindles or iPads.

“I am deeply curious about the significance of novels to how we conceptualise and engage with people, places, and events, and about the processes by which books are created, circulated, read, and valued (or not valued).

“Much of my research and teaching focuses on the popular genres that dominate the fiction industry —romance, crime and fantasy in my work on contemporary fiction, and adventure fiction in my work on nineteenth-century texts.

“My interest in genre is also reflected in my work on historical fiction – most recently to write about Hilary Mantel’s hugely successful trilogy of novels about Thomas Cromwell.”

Professor Fletcher says it was the University that brought her to Tasmania.

“Living and working in Tasmania has profoundly shaped my research interests. When we moved here, I started reading every Tasmanian-set novel I could get my hands on, and from there to reading novels set on islands. I became fascinated by how distinctive types of places are associated with, invite, or even require, distinctive types of storytelling.”

At the time of writing she had her ninth book under way, this one in collaboration with a fellow English scholar at the University of Tasmania, Professor Elizabeth Leane. The book, Circulating Bestsellers: The Geography of the Book Market, will be part of a series Professor Fletcher is co-editing for Cambridge University Press on 21^st Century bestsellers.