Merrill Turner's research centers on issues of genre and gender--how popular forms might be mined by the avant-garde as well as the middlebrow in order to illuminate questions of gender and sexuality. Her current project argues that twentieth-century British historical fictions renegotiate sexual and gender identities as a means of envisioning and creating a past that did not exist.  Her research and teaching interests revolve around the modern and contemporary British novel, with particular attention paid to the midcentury; women's writing; genre fiction; and life writing more broadly.

Merrill received her PhD in 2018 from Washington University in St. Louis, and her MA in 2010 from McGill University.  She was most recently a Postdoctoral Fellow in English at Wash U. Before that, she was Visiting Assistant Professor at Colorado College and lecturer at the Université de Haute-Bretagne Rennes II.  Her scholarly articles have appeared in Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, Modern Language Quarterly, and the Journal of Modern Literature.  Other writing has appeared in The New Yorker online and Le Monde.