NHS THS Academic Director

New THS Academic Director

The Thomas Hardy Society is delighted to announce the appointment of Professor Mark Ford as our new Academic Director.

Mark has supported the Society and been a major contributor to THS conferences and events for many years, and the CoM are delighted that he has agreed to take up this post from November and are very much looking forward to working with him on some exciting new projects.

Mark Damon Chutter, THS Chair and current Academic Director has successfully managed to balance both demanding roles, but when the handover in November is complete, he will be able to focus more of his time on representing the Thomas Hardy Society and navigating us through the exciting Hardy 100 Centenary events currently being planned.

Mark Ford is the author of four collections of poetry: Landlocked (Chatto & Windus, 1992), Soft Sift (Faber & Faber, 2001), Six Children (Faber & Faber, 2011), and Enter, Fleeing (Faber & Faber, 2018). He has also published three monographs, Raymond Roussel and the Republic of Dreams (Faber & Faber, 2000), Thomas Hardy: Half a Londoner (Harvard University Press, 2016), and Woman Much Missed: Thomas Hardy, Emma Hardy, and Poetry (Oxford University Press, 2023). His essays have been collected in four volumes, the most recent of which is A Guest Among Stars: Essays on Twentieth-Century Poets (Black Spring, 2024). This Dialogue of One: Essays on Poets from John Donne to Joan Murray (Eyewear, 2014), was awarded the Poetry Foundation’s 2015 Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism. Other publications include editions of the work of John Ashbery, Frank O’Hara, Mick Imlah, and Allen Ginsberg, and he also edited the 800-page anthology London: A History in Verse (Harvard University Press, 2012). He is a regular contributor to the London Review of Books and the New York Review of Books.

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Upcoming events

Hardy, Powys: Time and Place - A Joint Study Day

From 24/10/2026 until 25/10/2026
Starts 10:00 until 17:30

Chaldon Herring - A Walk, Talk & Sunday Lunch

On 25/10/2026
Starts 12:00 until 14:00

A Victorian Christmas at Poxwell Manor

On 20/12/2026
Starts 14:00 until 17:00

Thomas Hardy Memorial Service 2027

On 09/01/2027
Starts 13:00 until 14:00