Biography

Before joining Keele, I completed a doctoral degree at University College London in 2016 and a postdoctoral fellowship at Tübingen University in 2018. My monograph The Tramp in British Literature 1850-1950 was shortlisted for the Literary Encyclopedia Book Prize in 2022.

Research and scholarship

My primary current research interest is nineteenth- and twentieth-century literary and cultural representations of poverty. Other research interests include critical theory and film.

Teaching

ENGLISH:

  • Reading Literature (ENG-10026)
  • Literature and Social Change (ENG-20064)
  • Literature and History: Writing the Americas (ENG-10036)
  • Methods and Approaches to Literature (ENG-20066)

FILM:

  • Introduction to Television Studies (FIL-10006)
  • Adaptation (FIL-20011)
  • Science Fiction Cinema: Utopias and Dystopias (FIL-200005)

Publications

BOOKS

  • The Tramp in British Literature, 1850-1950 (London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021). 340 pp.

ARTICLES

  • “György Lukács and the Eighteenth-Century Novel.” Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 71-2 (2023): 127-144.
  • "Representing the Tramp in British Interwar Social Exploration Literature: Frank Jennings, Frank Gray and George Orwell." English Studies 103-6 (2022): 871-898. 
  • “Representing the Poor: The Emergence of the ‘Point-of-View’ Mode in Interwar Documentary Film, Mass Observation and the Publications of Victor Gollancz Ltd.” Twentieth-Century Literature 68-1 (2022): 1-24. 
  • “‘Progressing Backwards’: Rural Outsider Figures in Richard Jefferies, W.H. Hudson and Edward Thomas.” English Studies 103-10 (2021): 1-25. 
  • “Appropriating the Abject: Witchcraft in Dario Argento and Daria Nicolodi’s Suspiria (1977) and David Kajganich and Luca Guadagnino’s 2018 Remake.” New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film 18-1&2 (2020): 43-59.

BOOK CHAPTERS

  • “Precarious Living in the Films of Ken Loach” in Living with Strangers: Bedsits and Boarding-houses in Modern English Life, Literature and Film (London: Bloomsbury, 2018): 145-160.

JOURNAL REVIEWS

  • “Alistair Robinson’s Victorian Vagrancy: A Cultural History of the Wandering Poor.” Journal of Victorian Culture (2022): Web. 23 May 2022.
  • “Consumerism, Waste, and Re-Use.” European Journal of American Studies 2017-2: Web. 1 Aug. 2017.
  • “Luke Seaber’s Incognito Social Investigation in British Literature.” George Orwell Society Journal 11 (2016): 30-37.
  • “Robert Colls’ George Orwell: English Rebel.” George Orwell Studies 1 (2016): 112-121.

School of Humanities
Chancellor's Building
Keele University
Staffordshire
ST5 5AA
Tel: +44 (0) 1782 733109

Head of School
Dr Nick Seager
Room: CBB1.038 (Chancellor's Building, 'B' Extension)
Tel: +44 (0) 1782 733142
Email: n.p.seager@keele.ac.uk

School and college outreach
Tel: +44 (0) 1782 734009
Email: outreach@keele.ac.uk