Sam George is Senior Lecturer in Literature and MA Programme Tutor in Humanities at the University of Hertfordshire. She completed my PhD at the Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies, University of York, in 2004 and taught in the Department of English Literature at the University of Sheffield before taking up her post at Hertfordshire in 2007. Her research interests include eighteenth-century literature, literature and science, writing for children and young adults, vampire literature and culture. She is currently Reviews Editor for literature for the Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies and a Reader for Broadview and Manchester University Press.

Sam investigates the relationship between scientific debates, juvenile literature, sexuality and culture, in educational writing and books for young adults. She is currently researching the trope of non reflection in vampire narratives and its relationship to Wildean aesthetics and the body. A major research project on the vampire as metaphor is developing out of this.  The project was launched via an international conference: ‘Open Graves, Open Minds: Vampires and the Undead in Modern Culture’ which took place at the University of Hertfordshire in April. Media interest in the research showcased at the conference has been unprecedented and word has spread from London to Sydney, Canada to Taiwan.

Her interview on vampires can be read in The Guardian:  and the titles of the papers for inclusion in the forthcoming Open Graves, Open Minds book can be seen here. The publication developing from the conference will form part of the syllabus for the new MA module ‘Reading the Vampire’. The vampire MA will run for the first time in 2010/11. The book will be published in London in 2012 to mark the centenary of Stoker’s death.