Members

Dr. Shane McCorristine

Interdisciplinary historian with interests in the 'night side' of modern experience - namely social attitudes toward death, crime, dreams, ghosts, and the supernatural. My research argues that these aspects of life were central in making people (especially in western societies) feel modern. In looking at these topics I draw on a variety of approaches and literatures from cultural history, medical humanities, and literary studies. 

Born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, Dr. McCorristine was educated at University College Dublin where he received his PhD in History in 2008. He then held research fellowships in the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, at LMU Munich, and at the Institute of English Studies at the University of London. In 2010, he was awarded a Marie Curie Fellowship to work on the cultural history of Arctic exploration at Maynooth University and the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge. In 2013, he joined a team at the University of Leicester working on the large-scale Wellcome project 'Harnessing the Power of the Criminal Corpse'. He holds Fellowships of the Royal Historical Society, the Royal Society of Arts, and the Higher Education Academy.  He joined the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at Newcastle University in 2018.