Dr Caroline Wintersgill

I am Senior Lecturer in Publishing Studies at University of Stirling. I teach on the MLitt and MRes degrees in Publishing Studies and on the BA in English Studies. Before coming to Stirling I was Lecturer in Publishing at University College London (UCL) and prior to that an Associate Lecturer in English and American Studies at the University of Winchester.

I came to academia in 2015, following a 25 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 keep my hand in with the publishing industry as an Editorial Board Member of Scottish Universities Press (SUP) and a Trustee of the Books Council of Wales.

My primary research field is contemporary literary and publishing cultures, with a particular interest in small press publishing. My PhD is in contemporary literature and it was on endings in contemporary fiction, combining theoretically informed close readings of a range of contemporary novels (with Kazuo Ishiguro, Ian McEwan, Naomi Alderman and Kate Atkinson among others) with empirical work among authors, readers and representatives of the literary industry. I studied for the PhD at University of Winchester, funded by their 175th Anniversary Studentship, following an MA in Contemporary Literature from the same institution and a BA in English Literature from University of Newcastle Upon Tyne. I also have an MSc in Politics and Sociology from Birkbeck, University of London . I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

In terms of professional service, I have been on the the Executive of The British Association of Contemporary Literary Studies for most of the past eight years, serving as co-organiser for Conferences and Events inluding the BACLS-WHN Biennial Conference at Stirling in 2025. I am a the Reviews Editor for Logos: Journal of the World Publishing Community.

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).