Dr. Jan Melissa Schramm

Biography

Jan-Melissa Schramm is a Professor at the Faculty of English, University of Cambridge, and currently serves as the Vice-Master of Trinity Hall (2022-2026). Originally from Tasmania, she studied Arts and Law at the Australian National University and was admitted to the Bar of the Supreme Court of Tasmania in 1992. After working briefly as a lawyer specializing in criminal cases, she came to Cambridge on a scholarship to pursue her PhD, focusing on the evolving conceptions of testimony in literary contexts during the long nineteenth century. Schramm has previously held a Junior Research Fellowship and has been actively involved in interdisciplinary work within the humanities, having served as Deputy Director of the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) from 2017 to 2020. Her research primarily explores the intersection of literature and law, particularly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with a focus on writers like Henry Fielding and Charles Dickens. Schramm has also published several notable works, including 'Censorship and Representation in Nineteenth-Century England' and 'Atonement and Self-Sacrifice in Nineteenth-Century Narrative'. She supervises MPhil and PhD dissertations relating to British prose, Australian fiction, and the cultural impacts of law and literature.

Research Interests