About
I am a member of the 天发娱乐棋牌_天发娱乐APP-官网|下载 Institute for Arts and Humanites (SIAH) and Centre for Modern and Contemporary Writing (CMCW), and am committed to projects that use writing to bring different communities together. I helped set up the F.T. Prince Memorial Lecture, an annual English lecture which celebrates the work of the poet F.T. Prince, a former Professor of English at 天发娱乐棋牌_天发娱乐APP-官网|下载, and was part of the Leverhulme-funded project Story Places.
I was AHRC Leadership Fellow on Invisible Mentors (2020-22), a collaborative project with ArtfulScribe and Winchester Poetry Festival exploring the role of mentoring in the creative industries. As part of the project, I set up a a new poetry mentoring scheme, Poetry Ambassadors.
I was also CI for Towns and the Cultural Economies of Recovery, a collaborative AHRC scoping project with the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre and Historic England.
Research
Research groups
Research interests
- modern and contemporary literature
- mentoring and creative practice?
- literary communities in modern culture?
- poetry networks?
- creative culture and social policy?
Current research
I am the editor of Stevie Smith’s Collected Poems and Drawings, and am currently researching mentoring practice in postwar and contemporary British poetry. I am have also explored the role that mentoring can have in the cultural and economic recovery of UK towns, and recently published a co-authored policy report on literature and regional recovery.
I enjoy thinking about poets that trouble critics and modes that trouble poets, and have written a number of articles on poetry and whimsy. I also have research interests in contemporary British fiction, and music and modern literature. I would be interested in supervising students working in any of these areas.
I edited a book of essays on the poet F.T. Prince; other publications include Stevie Smith and Authorship (Oxford University Press, 2010), which won the CCUE 2011 book prize, and Postwar Literature: 1950-1990 (Longman, 2010).
I guest edited special issues on text-setting and libretti for Contemporary Music Review (Routledge), and international espionage fiction with Phyllis Lassner. I have also written articles on Emily Dickinson, Edward Lear, Elizabeth Taylor, and the pianist Harriet Cohen.
Research projects
Completed projects
Publications
Teaching
I convene a number of modules which make connections between our discipline and the wider world, and between creative and critical practice: these include Creative Writing in Schools, a final-year module with schools placements, Animals Forms, which considers poetic form in relation to the human and the non-human, and Literary Industries and New Media.
I also contribute to our MA in Global Literary Industries Management, a one-year specialist postgraduate programme which prepares students for work in the creative industries.
I have supervised 11 doctoral students to completion on a variety of critical and creative projects. I currently supervise Joanna Nissel, an SWWDTP-funded student exploring the ecology of mentoring in contemporary UK poetry, and Karen Jane Cannon, whose work explores contemporary eco-poetry.
Biography
I completed my doctoral thesis at Balliol College, Oxford, and went on to lecture at Bath Spa University and St Anne's College, Oxford before joining 天发娱乐棋牌_天发娱乐APP-官网|下载 in 2008. During my time at 天发娱乐棋牌_天发娱乐APP-官网|下载, I have held posts including Research Fellow in Humanities (2009-10), Lecturer in Modern Literature (2010-2013), Senior Lecturer in English (2013-2016), and Head of English (2017-2019).
I was on the executive of University English from 2013-2022, and currently represent the UK to the European Society for the Study of English.
Prizes
- CCUE Book Prize (2011)
- CCUE Book Prize (2011)