Fiona Stafford

Fiona J. Stafford (born July 1960) is an English literary scholar and academic. She is a Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Somerville College. She is a specialist in Romantic literature in English, and has also written about the influence of the Romantics on modern literature.

Early life and education Stafford was born in Lincoln but moved around during her childhood following her father's postings in the Royal Air Force. She studied for a BA in English language and literature at the University of Leicester, writing a dissertation on RAF slang. She then studied at the University of Oxford gaining an M.Phil. in English Language and Literature and a D.Phil.

Career Stafford's first academic appointment was as a British Academy postdoctoral fellow at Lincoln College, Oxford. After a short spell teaching in the United States, she returned to Oxford and was appointed a tutorial fellow of Somerville College.

In 2006 Stafford was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In 2018 she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy.

In 2019 the University of Leicester conferred on her an honorary doctorate of letters.

Media work In 2019 Stafford appeared in an episode of the BBC Radio 4 series In Our Time on Robert Burns alongside Murray Pittock and Robert Crawford. She returned in 2022 for an episode focused on Jane Austen's novel Persuasion alongside Paddy Bullard and Karen O'Brien, and in 2026 for an episode on John Keats with Meiko O'Halloran and Nicholas Roe.

Selected publications

(winner of the Rose Mary Crawshay Prize, 2011