Kaori Matsumoto

Profile

Biography

My research lies at the intersection of English literature, feminism, and queer theories. Focusing on modernist writers such as Virginia Woolf, Radclyffe Hall, and Bryher, whose work has long been categorised as “lesbian literature,” my project explores how lesbian and trans histories are intricately intertwined in modernist narratives, and how multi-layered characters on the lesbian–transgender spectrum are in fact depicted within that very corpus.

In my PhD project, “Writing of One’s Own: Lesbian and Trans Affinity in Sapphic Modernism,” I examine how desires that could not yet be named – those on the lesbian-trans spectrum – were negotiated through the act of writing the queer self.

I completed my BA in English Literature at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan, where I explored mother-daughter relationships in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (1927). I then received my Master’s degree from the University of Tokyo in 2024, with a thesis on Woolf and écriture féminine that engaged with philosophers such as Judith Butler, Luce Irigaray, and Jacques Derrida. After conducting research in Tokyo for the first two years of my PhD, I joined the Centre for Women’s Studies at the University of York in 2025, under the supervision of Dr Boriana Alexandrova and Dr Clare Bielby.

In Tokyo, I have served as a postgraduate student advisor since 2022, facilitating a safe space for women and LGBTQI+ individuals and supporting related academic events within the university.

Education:

PhD in Women’s and Gender Studies, University of York (in progress)

MA in English Literature, University of Tokyo

BA in English Literature, Waseda University

Publications

Selected publications

• “Spectres of Lesbians: Reading Mieko Kawakami's Wisteria and the Three Women through Virginia Woolf”［レズビアンの亡霊たち ──ヴァージニア・ウルフから川上未映子「ウィステリアと三人の女たち」を読む]. Eureka, Poetry and Criticism. Seidosha, Oct 2026. Invited. Forthcoming.
• “Sexuality: Queering Lesbian Literature”［セクシュアリティ──レズビアン文学をクィアする］. Virginia Woolf through Keywords, Virginia Woolf Society of Japan, 2025, pp. 184-93. Refereed.
• “History, or Her Story”［歴史、あるいは彼女の物語］. Eureka, Poetry and Criticism, vol. 57, no. 5, Seidosha, Mar 2025, p. 270. Invited.

External activities

Overview

• Postgraduate Student Advisor, KOmaba Campus Safer Space (KOSS), University of Tokyo, 2022-present.
• Member, Working Group on Anti-Harassment Regulations, Virginia Woolf Society of Japan, 2024-2026.
• Assistant, Theatrical Reading Event “The Message from Gaza,” Readers Without Borders, 9 Apr 2025.