Education

PhD English and American Literature, Stanford University
MSc (Oxon.) Comparative Education, University of Oxford
BA Hons. (First Class) English, University of Oxford
BA English, College of Saint Benedict

Biography

Laura McGrane is Chair of English and Co-lead on the Visual Culture Arts and Media building project at Haverford College. She received her PhD from Stanford University and teaches eighteenth-century print culture and digital media, integrating theoretical work on interface and coding into scholarship on the history of the book.

She has published on eighteenth-century print and performance and has led faculty and student Mellon-funded workshops on The Humanities Lab (2014) and The New Digital Archivalism (2009).  She is a co-adviser for Re: Humanities, a national undergraduate conference on digital humanities. With colleagues at Bryn Mawr and Swarthmore Colleges, she launched the Tri-College Digital Humanities Initiative.  She is also on the editorial board of 18thConnect (http://www.18thConnect.org).

While a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford, she conducted Masters research on issues of access at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa. She is currently the District IV (Pennsylvania, Rhode Island) Rhodes Secretary and is a regular workshop leader on issues of digital humanities in liberal arts education.

Research

Eighteenth-century British literature, with particular focus on the novel, drama, non-fictional prose, and visual culture; Transatlantic studies; South African literature; historiography, media studies and digital humanities; liberal arts education and technology.