Research at University: The Foundations
When I think about research at university, I picture myself surrounded by open books and tabs of academic databases, scribbling notes in the margins of articles while glancing at the clock to make sure I stay on track. The goals are usually clear and structured: find a handful of reliable sources, summarise the key arguments, and slot them neatly into an essay plan. It’s a skillset that requires organisation and discipline. There’s a certain satisfaction in it—building an argument step by step, using scholarship to support or challenge your ideas.
However, this kind of research often feels constrained by the assignment brief. It’s shaped by deadlines and grading criteria, which means there’s only so far you can go. You rarely have the luxury of wandering down a side path just because it intrigues you. Every discovery must be tethered to the question at hand. That containment has its value—it stops you from drifting into endless tangents—but it can also make the process feel slightly mechanical, like ticking boxes rather than following a genuine thread of curiosity.
Now that I’m working on my own independent project, though, I notice the difference. The research I’m conducting on Bram Stoker doesn’t feel confined by someone else’s framework. It feels exploratory. I’m not gathering evidence for someone else’s rubric—I’m digging for the sake of the story, for the sake of understanding.
Researching Bram Stoker: A Deeper Dive
When most people think of Bram Stoker, they think of Dracula. It’s the book that defines him and has overshadowed much of his other writing. But I’ve been finding myself drawn to Stoker the man as much as Stoker the author. His life—shaped by childhood illness, years in Dublin, and his long career managing Henry Irving at the Lyceum Theatre—offers as many insights into his fiction as any single passage of Dracula ever could.
My research has taken me in multiple directions at once. On one level, I’m reading the obvious materials: biographies of Stoker, critical works that analyse his fiction, and collections of essays that situate him within the Gothic tradition. However, there are also less obvious routes. I’ve been following theatre histories that examine what it meant to run a major London stage in the late nineteenth century. I’ve dipped into digitised archives that preserve fragments of Victorian journalism and correspondence. Even Stoker’s less celebrated novels and short stories, which I’m trying to track down, feel important for understanding his broader imaginative world.
What strikes me most is how this research feels less about “finding the answer” and more about gathering fragments. Each piece—whether it’s a scholarly article, a personal anecdote about Stoker’s life, or a detail about Victorian anxieties—adds texture rather than closure. It’s a process of accumulation, layering, and revisiting.
Beyond Books and Screens
Of course, most of my time is still spent with books and screens. I have stacks of volumes at hand, each one marked with post-it notes and dog-eared pages. My browser is cluttered with bookmarks to websites that range from polished academic resources to niche blogs run by enthusiasts who’ve uncovered strange corners of Stoker’s history.
But there’s a limit to what you can absorb sitting at a desk. Reading about the late-Victorian world is not the same as immersing yourself in it. I’ve noticed how often Gothic literature, in particular, depends on atmosphere—the feeling of a place, the weight of its silences, the shape of its shadows. To understand that, you can’t rely entirely on second-hand accounts. You need to experience something close to it yourself.
That’s where creative research departs from academic research most starkly. At university, you wouldn’t submit an essay saying, “I stood in front of a ruined abbey and felt the weight of history press on me.” But in creative research, that embodied experience becomes vital. It shapes how you write and how you imagine.
Planning Whitby
That’s why my first research trip is to Whitby. For Stoker, Whitby was not just a picturesque seaside town. It became a crucible of inspiration, a place where the fragments of Dracula began to coalesce. The abbey ruins that dominate the cliff top, the narrow winding streets, and the restless energy of the sea all left their imprint on him—and, in turn, on the novel.
I want to stand in those same spaces, not to “verify” a detail the way an academic footnote would, but to feel the atmosphere that Stoker must have encountered. I imagine the abbey looming above me in silhouette, the wind carrying the salt of the North Sea, the cries of gulls echoing in the distance. These sensory impressions may never appear directly in my writing, but they’ll settle somewhere beneath the surface, shaping tone and texture.
Whitby, in this sense, isn’t just a trip—it’s part of the research itself. It’s about allowing place to speak, letting it add layers that no book or website can replicate.
Further Afield: A Possibility
At the moment, Whitby is the only trip firmly in my plans. However, I’ve already begun thinking about where this research could lead me next. Dublin, where Stoker was born and spent much of his early life, would offer another dimension, particularly given how formative his childhood illnesses and his student years at Trinity College seem to have been. London, the city where he lived and worked for decades, managing the Lyceum Theatre and moving in artistic and literary circles, feels equally important. And then, of course, there’s the tantalising idea of travelling to Eastern Europe, where Stoker’s imagination roamed when he conjured the landscapes of Dracula.
I don’t know if those journeys will materialise, but the possibility itself changes the way I think about research. It reminds me that this is not a static process bound to a desk. It’s dynamic, open-ended, and tied to movement and exploration. Even imagining future research trips pushes me to think about Stoker in a broader, more lived sense.
Research as Immersion
What I’ve come to realise is that creative research is immersive in a way that academic research rarely can be. It’s not only about gathering information but about allowing that information to seep into you until it becomes instinctive. Reading, walking, travelling, observing—each of these is part of the process.
In a way, I think of it like layering colours on a canvas. Academic research might provide the outlines or a sketch of the figure. Creative research fills in the tones and shades, sometimes in messy, unpredictable ways. It doesn’t always provide clear answers, but it gives depth, richness, and resonance.
Why It Feels Deeper
Perhaps that’s why this research feels so much deeper than what I’ve done at university. Academic work, valuable though it is, often ends once the essay is submitted. The scaffolding is dismantled; the bibliography is closed. But the work I’m doing on Bram Stoker doesn’t feel like it ends anywhere. Each new source leads to another question, each trip suggests another, and the sense of curiosity never quite shuts down.
It’s research not for a grade but for a lifelong conversation—with literature, with history, with place. And that’s why, even though I’m still surrounded by books and notes, this work feels fundamentally different. It doesn’t feel like an obligation. It feels like discovery.
A Writer’s Reflection
All of this has made me think differently about who I am as a writer. The research I’m conducting on Stoker isn’t just informing a single project; it’s shaping the way I perceive stories, the way I approach atmosphere, and the way I value the shadows of history. It’s showing me that my work isn’t just about what I can imagine in isolation, but about what I can discover, absorb, and translate into fiction.
In some ways, this is the kind of research I aim to base my writing on going forward. Not research that closes things off with neat conclusions, but research that keeps the doors open. Research that’s as much about walking through an unfamiliar street or standing in front of a ruined abbey as it is about underlining passages in a book. Research that doesn’t stop when the essay is submitted, but continues, quietly, indefinitely.
Because for me, the deeper I dig, the more I realise the research itself is the writing.
Gareth Ellis - Author 