Biography

I studied English and History at undergraduate level at Keele University in the UK and stayed on to complete an MA in Twentieth-Century British Fiction. After completing my doctorate on 1950s British fiction in 2001, I taught at a number of Universities including University of Birmingham, Staffordshire University, and the Open University before taking up the post of lecturer in English Literature at Keele in January 2005. I was promoted to senior lecturer in 2010.

Research and scholarship

My main research interests are in twentieth and twenty-first century literature and literary and cultural theory, and more specifically in:

• the connections between (post-)postmodernism, postcolonialism and contemporary fiction and culture
• fiction that addresses youth subcultures
• contemporary working-class writing
• BAME fiction (in a British context) of the postwar and contemporary period
• the expression of marginalized and intersectional voices in postwar and contemporary literature

I would welcome PhD and MPhil applications for projects in any of these areas. I particularly welcome proposals that address issues of marginalized voices and identities in literature. I also co-supervise creative writing PhDs, particularly in the critical components of the work.

Current Projects and Membership of Subject Associations

I am currently working on a monograph on youth subcultures in fiction from the postwar period to the first decade of the twenty-first century. I am also developing research interests and funding bids in contemporary working-class writing, and the representation and construction of neurological conditions and mental illness in contemporary fiction.

I am on the executive committees of The British Association of Contemporary Literary Studies and the Literary London Society. I am a member of the British Association of Modernist Studies, American Comparative Literature Association, the European Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies, and the Doris Lessing Society.

Teaching

Undergraduate

ENG-10028: Telling Tales: An Introduction to Narrative Fiction

ENG-10034: Texts and Contexts

ENG-20033: Romanticisms

ENG-20056: Twentieth-Century British Fiction and Poetry

ENG-30053: Postmodernism: Fiction, Film and Theory

Postgraduate

ENG-40050: Working in Contemporary Literature and Film

ENG-40049: Studying Contemporary Literature and Film

ENG-40007: Criticism, Analysis, Theory in Literary Studies

MDS-40018: Globalisation, Culture and Media

Research

I would welcome PhD and MPhil applications for projects in any of the following areas:

• the connections between (post-)postmodernism, postcolonialism and contemporary fiction and culture
• fiction that addresses youth subcultures
• contemporary working-class writing
• BAME fiction (in a British context) of the postwar and contemporary period
• the expression of marginalized and intersectional voices in postwar and contemporary literature.

I particularly welcome proposals that address issues of marginalized voices and identities in literature.

I also co-supervise creative writing PhDs, particularly in the critical components of the work.