Abigail Mills

MA English Literature

Pronouns: She/her
  • Doctoral Researcher

Abigail is a full-time doctoral researcher at Loughborough University, starting her PhD in late 2025 after completing her MA in English Literature at the University of Hull, where she graduated with a Distinction. Her research explores the increasing weirdness of water in literature, with a focus on its changing relationship with women's bodies in fiction from the Victorian era through to the contemporary.

The project is supervised by Dr Nick Freeman and Professor Jennifer Cooke. Abigail also completed her BA in English at the University of Hull, graduating in 2024. During her undergraduate studies, she developed a keen interest in the ecoGothic and Weird fiction, which has informed her current research trajectory.

“This alchemist sea, changing something into something else”: Water, Weirdness, and Women in Literature from the Victorian Era to the Contemporary.

PGR Supervisors: Dr Nick Freeman and Professor Jennifer Cooke

Abigail's research investigates the increasing weirdness of water in literature, from the Victorian era to the contemporary, with a particular focus on its complex relationship with women. Abigail's project explores how water has evolved from a Gothic symbol, associated with drowned and haunted women, to an actively weird presence that transforms the female body through narratives of aquatic body horror.
Drawing upon feminist and posthumanist theories of embodiment, Abigail's research examines what the evolving weirdness of water reveals about the porous boundaries between human and non-human forms, and how these narratives engage with cultural and historical constructions of femininity and the body.