Department audit

Derek Attridge, head of department, gives the lowdown on English and related literature at York University.

* Total number of academic staff: 36

* Permanent academic staff: 31

* Academic staff on fixed-term contracts: 5 (all replacement positions for staff on research grants, or pending the arrival of permanent staff)

* Hourly paid/casual academic staff: 4 (but the number varies from term to term)

* Other academic staff: 4 emeritus professors (not included in the above total)

* Professors or senior lecturers (including readers): 8 professors, 3 readers, 6 senior lecturers, 4 emeritus professors

* Ethnic minority academic staff: 1

* Ethnic minority academic staff who are professors or senior lecturers: 1

* Women academic staff: 15

* Women academic staff who are professors or senior lecturers: 5

* RAE rating: 5*A (6* in new currency)

* Last teaching quality assessment: 1995: Excellent. Internal assessment: 2003.

* Current and approved vacancies for the next 12 months: Just interviewed for chairs in modern literature and medieval English palaeography, and will advertise for a chair in Romantic literature in the autumn.

* Significant staff changes in the past six months: Laura Chrisman appointed to new chair in postcolonial studies; John Bowen (Keele) to a new chair in 19th-century literature; Jane Moody promoted to a personal chair; Mary Luckhurst to a senior lectureship; and Helen Smith appointed to a lectureship in early modern studies. Linne Mooney appointed to visiting professorship in medieval studies, 2004-05.

From October 2005: Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (Fordham) appointed to a chair in late-medieval literature; William H. Sherman (Maryland) to a chair in early modern studies; Matthew Bevis (Sheffield) to a lectureship in Victorian literature and Jane Elliott (Brown) to a lectureship in modern literature.

From October 2006: Ziad Elmarsafy (Kuwait) appointed to a senior lectureship in French.

* Research projects: Recent publications have included Richard Rowland's edition of Edward IV , Laura Chrisman's Postcolonial Contraventions and Nick Havely's Dante and the Franciscans . Lawrence Rainey is editor of the journal Modernism/Modernity . Recent awards include an Arts and Humanities Research Board grant of £185,655 for an edition of Shelley's poems.

* The main preoccupations of the department in the past six months: Making appointments; establishing an interdisciplinary Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies; setting up an MA in cultures of empire, resistance and postcoloniality; planning for a department of theatre, film and TV; bedding-in a new undergraduate curriculum; creating an archive of contemporary drama.