Dr Lucy Thompson

Lucy specialises in eighteenth and nineteenth-century literature. Her research centres on exploring how surveillance, both historically and today, affects people emotionally, with a specific focus on its connections to gender and literary culture. At the moment, she is focused on exploring works from a Critical Disability Studies perspective to shed light on how these texts reflect and shape cultural attitudes towards disability.

Her primary research interests encompass Romanticism, disability studies, gender studies, and surveillance theory. She delves into how surveillance and mechanisms of oversight became ingrained in society between 1780 and 1830, and how this legacy continues to shape our contemporary experiences. A significant aspect of Lucy’s work involves studying how women were subject to scrutiny in the long nineteenth century, examining different dimensions of surveillance such as its impact on medicalised bodies, domestic contexts, and sexuality. Her work in this area is captured in her recent book: Gender, Surveillance, and Literature in the Romantic Period (2022). In February 2025, her chapter on impairment, caregiving, and surveillance in William Godwin’s Mandeville will appear in the forthcoming book Care and Disability: Relational Representations (ed. Talia Schaffer and Chris Gabbard).

Additionally, Lucy has created a ‘Guide to Surveillance Terminology’, which compiles essential terms related to surveillance and provides clear definitions to enhance understanding in this complex area.

She welcomes PhD applications exploring aspects of surveillance and disability in fiction, as well as on Romantic literature.

Routledge author profile

Guide to Surveillance Terminology