Professor Dame Marina Warner FBA

History; historical studies of language and literature; English language and literature

Elected 2005

Marina Warner is an award-winning novelist, short story writer, historian and mythographer, who works across genres and cultures exploring myths and stories. Recent work has focused particularly on the magic of fairy tales and the Arabian Nights, including Stranger Magic (2011), and Once Upon a Time (2014). In Fly Away Home: Stories (2015) she draws on mythic predecessors, translating them into contemporary significance. In 2015 she was awarded the prestigious Holberg Prize, and was also Chair of the judging panel for the Man Booker International Book Prize. She is a Quondam Fellow of All Souls, and Professor of English and Creative Writing at Birkbeck College, University of London. In March 2017, Warner was elected as the Royal Society of Literature's 19th – and first female – president, succeeding Colin Thubron in the post. Her Forms of Enchantment: Writings on Art and Artists was published by Thames & Hudson in September 2018. In March 2018 she was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy.

10-Minute Talks: The power of stories and the practice of rhetoric

3 Mar 2021 Professor Dame Marina Warner FBA

Professor Marina Warner FBA argues that in an era of public disinformation, the study of the uses of rhetoric, as deployed in many forms of literature, is urgently needed.

Current post

Birkbeck, University of London Professor of English and Creative Writing

SOAS, University of London Professorial Research Fellow

Past appointments

All Souls College University of Oxford Quondam Fellow

2017 - 2019

All Souls College University of Oxford Fellow

2013 - 2017

University of Essex Professor, Department of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies, University of Essex

2004 - 2014

Trinity College, Cambridge Visiting Fellow Commoner

1997 - 1998

Erasmus University, Rotterdam Tinbergen Professor

1991 -

Getty Research Institute Visiting Scholar

1987 - 1988

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