Yunlong Chen

Biography

Background

I am currently a first-year PhD student in English Literature at LLC, University of Edinburgh. My research examines the (spatialised) representation of everyday experience of the urban life in modernist writings. My thesis focuses on the modernist entanglement between urban spatiality and queer sexuality in the works of James Joyce. 

More broadly, my work engages the intersection of modernist literature, urban space, diaspora, gender and sexuality, affect and the body, as well as kinship and family structures. I also take a general interest in British and Irish modernist authors, especially Jean Rhys and Christopher Isherwood.

Qualifications

  • PhD student in English Literature, University of Edinburgh, 2025–present
  • MSc Literature and Modernity: 1900 to the Present, University of Edinburgh, 2023–2024
  • BA in English Language and Literature, Beijing Foreign Studies University, 2018–2022

Responsibilities & affiliations

Assistant Editor, FORUM: University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Culture & the Arts, January 2026–present

Participant

Across the Waters: XXIX International James Joyce Symposium, University of Glasgow, 14–19 June 2024.

Papers delivered

‘A Day Out of Time: Queer Mourning, Intimacy, and Weird Collage in Christopher Isherwood’s A Single Man.’ Weird Modernisms: BAMS/MSA 2026 Joint Conference, Loughborough University, 1–4 July 2026.

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