I’ve just returned from a mini lecture tour in Germany! It was an honour to be invited to share my work on the current elemental aesthetics book project with colleagues and students at the University of Konstanz and TU Dresden, at the invitation of Prof. Timo Müller (Professor of...

I’m currently working on my new book project, Arcadian Revenge: Science Fiction in the Era of Ecocatastrophe, which considers “ecocatastrophe” narratives in literature, film, graphic fiction, contemporary art and music. Drawing on debates in eco-socialism and anti-humanism, as well as...

The Los Angeles Review of Books recently published a review article of China Miéville: Critical Essays, the collection I co-edited for Gylphi published in 2015. Gylphi also published Carl Freedman's excellent Art and Idea in the Novels of China Miéville, which was also...

In June 2017, I'll be returning to the Speculations Lecture Series run at King's College London to deliver a lecture on “Islands at the End of the World: The Pseudo-Apocalypses of Claire Fuller and Sam Taylor.” The talk will consider an intriguing sub-set of...

I'm delighted to announce that China Miéville: Critical Essays is now published. I've been co-editing this collection since Autumn 2012, after the successful Weird Council conference which saw academics from all over the world meeting to discuss Miéville's...

Since we organised a conference dedicated to British novelist Maggie Gee's writing in 2012, Dr Sarah Dillon (University of Cambridge) and I have been co-editing a book of scholarly essays examining her novels and short stories. Maggie Gee: Critical Essays is published by Gylphi...

I was fortunate enough to be able to travel to the US in Autumn 2011 to attend a fantastic conference, "Critical Refusals: The 4th Conference of the International Herbert Marcuse Society," held at the University of Pennsylvania in October 2011. Whilst this was the biennial...

Having worked extensively on the thinking of Ernst Bloch in my PhD research, Fictions of the Not Yet: Time and the Twenty-First Century British Novel, I was keen to research Bloch's own literary criticism in more detail. In April 2010 I was able to start mapping out some of the key...

In September 2008 I co-organised a one-day AHRC-funded international conference with Dr Matthew Mead and Dr Alexander Dunst at the University of Nottingham titled "New Radical Subjectivities: Rethinking Agency for the 21st Century." The conference attracted a diverse range of...

In September 2009 I delivered a conference paper at the David Mitchell conference organised by Dr Sarah Dillon and sponsored by the arts and humanities publisher Gylphi. The conference was an incredible experience and launched a series of conferences dedicated to living writers, in which the...

In February 2008 and February 2010 I interviewed the novelist Jon McGregor whose first novel, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things (Bloomsbury 2002), had been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the British Book Awards Newcomer of the Year, the Commonwealth Writers Prize and The Sunday...

Having worked on Jim Crace's fiction as part of my PhD research, Fictions of the Not Yet: Time in the 21st Century British Novel, I was keen to meet the critically-acclaimed novelist and Jim kindly agreed to let me interview him at his house in Birmingham. Between numerous cups of tea I...