Dr Miles Leeson

About

Dr Miles Leeson is Reader in English Literature at the University of Chichester and Director of the Iris Murdoch Research Centre, the principal international centre for research into Murdoch’s life and work. His research brings literature into conversation with philosophy, theology, ethics and the visual arts, with particular interests in moral attention, the Gothic imagination, gender and sexuality, and the relationship between artistic and philosophical thought.

He is Lead Editor of the annual Iris Murdoch Review, co-editor of Palgrave Macmillan’s Iris Murdoch Today series, and co-host of the Iris Murdoch Podcast. He also directs the International Iris Murdoch Conference and supervises postgraduate research on Murdoch, post-war women’s writing, literature and philosophy, and related areas of twentieth-century culture.

His books include Iris Murdoch: Philosophical Novelist (Continuum, 2010), Incest in Contemporary Literature (Manchester University Press, 2018), Iris Murdoch: A Centenary Celebration (2019), Iris Murdoch and the Literary Imagination (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023), Iris Murdoch and the Western Theological Imagination (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), and Visiting Mrs Bayley and Other Essays (2026).

Leeson was one of the editors of Poems from an Attic: The Selected Poems of Iris Murdoch (Chatto & Windus, 2025). He subsequently discovered more than eighty previously unknown artworks by Murdoch and curated Iris Murdoch Amongst the Artists at the University of Chichester in 2026—the first exhibition devoted to Murdoch’s visual art. The discovery and exhibition received national coverage, including features in The Guardian and The Times and an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour.

He is currently co-editing The Oxford Handbook of Iris Murdoch (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2028) and writing Iris Murdoch’s Gothic Imagination: Enchantment, Evil and Attention for Cambridge University Press (forthcoming 2028). His present research examines Murdoch’s moral Gothic, her conception of attention, and the connections among her fiction, philosophy, poetry and visual art.

Professional

Module Co-ordinator for:

• Year 1 – Conflicts and Controversies in Victorian Literature
• Year 2 – Agents of Change: Women’s Writing in the 20th and 21st Centuries
• Year 3 – European Literary Legacies: Writing the City (Venice)
• Year 3 – English Literature: The Dissertation

As well as on a range of other modules.

Research

Dr Leeson focuses on areas including:

• Iris Murdoch: fiction, philosophy, poetry, theology and visual art
• Literature, philosophy and moral psychology
• Gothic and supernatural writing
• Theology, metaphysics and post-Christian culture
• Post-war British and European fiction
• Women’s writing, gender and sexuality
• Literature, education and moral attention
• Archives, literary discovery and public humanities

He is also the Director of the Iris Murdoch Research Centre.

His archival discoveries have transformed contemporary understanding of Murdoch as a poet and visual artist.

He is currently Senior Visiting Fellow at Kingston University, and Visiting Professor at the University of Nanjing. In 2027 he will be a Visiting Scholar at Baylor University, USA. He has lectured across Europe and the USA, as well as in China and Japan.

He has appeared across a range of media including BBC Radio 4’s ‘In Our Time’, ‘Great Lives’, ‘Start the Week’ and ‘Women’s Hour’ and BBC Radio 5 Live, as well as being interviewed in The Times, the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph and other international news outlets. He has written for the Times Literary Supplement, Books Ireland. The Times Education Supplement and many other spaces in print and online.

PhD Supervision

Dr Leeson currently supervises four researchers who focus on the work of Iris Murdoch, and one working on the influence of John Locke on the mid-Victorian Novel.

He welcomes proposals for MPhil and PhD research in Iris Murdoch studies; post-war British and European fiction; literature and philosophy; women’s writing; Gothic literature; theology and literature; moral attention; and archival or interdisciplinary approaches to twentieth-century culture.

Key Publications

Monographs and Edited Collections

• Iris Murdoch: Philosophical Novelist (London: Continuum Press, 2010) 
• Incest in Contemporary Literature (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018)
• Iris Murdoch: A Centenary Celebration (Sabrestorm Fiction, 2019)
• Iris Murdoch and the Literary Imagination  (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)
• Iris Murdoch and the Western Theological Imagination (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2025)
• Poems from an Attic: The Selected Poetry of Iris Murdoch (London: Chatto and Windus, 2025)
• Visiting Mrs Bayley and Other Essays (Iris Murdoch Research Centre Press, 2026)
• Iris Murdoch’s Gothic Imagination: Enchantment, Evil and Attention (Cambridge University Press, Contracted 2028)
• The Oxford Handbook of Iris Murdoch (Oxford University Press, Contracted, 2028)

Research Output