Staff profiles

• Centre for Travel Writing Studies
• Nottingham Institute for English Research (NIfER)

Professor Youngs is widely regarded as a world-leading figure in the development of travel writing studies. As well as his own many publications on the subject, his contributions to the field include:

• the founding in 1997 of the journal Studies in Travel Writing (now published four times a year by Routledge), which he continues to edit
• the Borders and Crossings series of international conferences (inaugurated with Glenn Hooper in 1998)
• the establishment in 2002 of NTU's Centre for Travel Writing Studies and of its biennial series of postgraduate day-seminars
• the establishment with Peter Hulme of the monograph series Routledge Research in Travel Writing
• his co-organisation of several seminars and conferences in the UK and abroad. 

Such activities have helped secure him an international reputation as a key facilitator and innovator in the field. Besides travel writing, Professor Youngs' teaching and research interests include United States Literature (post-1850, and especially the 1890s); British literature (post-1850, especially modernism); and Postcolonial Writing.

• Writing The Cambridge Introduction to Travel Writing, Cambridge University Press
• Editing with Charles Forsdick Travel Writing: Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies four volumes, Routledge, forthcoming
• 2012, completion of a book on late nineteeth-century fiction for Liverpool University Press
• 2007 to present, Series editor, Routledge Research in Travel Writing, with Professor Peter Hulme (University of Essex)
• 1997-present, Founding editor of Studies in Travel Writing, currently published four times a year by Routledge

• Helen and John S. Best Fellowship, American Geographical Society/University of Wisconsin Milwaukee (2010)
• Associate Editor for The Oxford Companion to English Literature (seventh edition., 2010)
• President of the International Society for Travel Writing (2009-present)
• Member of the International Association of University Professors in English (elected 2008)
• Visiting Fellow (non-stipendiary), Institute of English Studies, School for Advanced Studies, University of London (2007-2008)
• Fellow of the English Association (elected 2007)
• External examiner for MA in English Literary Studies since 1900, Liverpool Hope University College, (2005-2009)
• Everett Helms Visiting Fellowship, Lilly Library, Indiana University, (2005)
• Member of Council of the Hakluyt Society (2004-2009)
• External examiner and advisor for BA Hons English Studies, Grimsby College, (2003-2007)
• External examiner for MA courses in Comparative Literature and African Literatures, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. (2000-2003)
• Founding Editor of Studies in Travel Writing (1997-present)
• Member of Editorial Board of Symbiosis: A Journal of Anglo-American Literary Relations (from 1997)
• External Examiner for more than 20 PhDs from universities in Australia, Ireland, Spain, Sweden and the UK (including Cambridge, Oxford and Warwick)
• Refereeing for several journals and publishers, including Cambridge University Press, Manchester University Press, Oxford University Press, Palgrave, Routledge/Taylor and Francis
• Regular guest lectures and invited papers at universities in the UK and abroad
• Co-organiser of many international conferences on travel writing, most recently the ISTW's 2010 conference at the University of South Carolina

Professor Youngs welcomes inquiries from prospective research students (at MRes, MPhil and PhD level) in travel writing studies, African-American writing, and in other areas of post-1850 Anglophone literature (including late nineteenth-century British and US literature, modernist and postcolonial writing). Students he is currently supervising as Director of Studies include Esme Coulbert, funded by an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award scheme, working with Coventry Transport Museum on early narratives of travel by automobile; Glen Winfield on contemporary African American travel writing; Mark Sullivan on Richard Harding Davis; and Tony Robinson-Smith, writing a travelogue of Bhutan for a creative writing PhD.

Further information may be obtained from the University Graduate School.