The vampire as we know it today was discovered in the early eighteenth century when Enlightenment science collided with Eastern European folklore. A series of apparently verified outbreaks of vampirism captured the attention of medical researchers, political commentators, social theorists, theologians, and philosophers, and ‘vampiromania’ swept across Europe. In this talk, cultural historian and literary critic Nick Groom traces the history of the vampire from being a monster embodying humankind's fears to becoming a thoroughly modern entity that defines and challenges what it is to be human in the twenty-first century.

Drawing on often disturbing medical, forensic, empirical, and sociopolitical perspectives as well as on literary and artistic representations, Nick will reveal how this rich and eerie history presents the vampire as a strikingly complex being that has been used to express the traumas and contradictions of the human condition.

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Nick Groom
Nick is Professor of English Literature at the University of Exeter, an author on subjects ranging from the history of the Union Jack to Thomas Chatterton. He has edited several books and regularly appears on television, radio, and at literary festivals as an authority on English Literature, seasonal customs, J. R. R. Tolkien, the ‘Gothic’ and ‘British’ and 'English' identities. Due to his extensive work on the Gothic, especially on the history of vampires, he has become known as the 'Prof of Goth' in the media. He has written several articles on the Goth scene, including essays on the singer-songwriter Nick Cave, as well as editing classics such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.