As part of my developing interest in science fiction and fantasy literature, I've recently written a new optional module for third-year students at the University of Lincoln. The module will give students the opportunity to analyse the genre of modern science fiction (SF) and its...

This year I've been teaching on the MA in 21st Century Literature at the University of Lincoln. One of our optional modues, "21st Century Literary Theory," has now been redesigned by Dr Lorna Burns and myself and will run in its new form in the Spring semester...

This film screening series will accompany the third-year optional module on Science Fiction that I'm teaching in the Autumn term 2012. Week 1 | Origins Le Voyage dans La Lune (1902) (dir. Georges Méliès) Aelita: Queen of Mars (1924) (dir. Yakov...

I am currently Module Convenor for the core first-year module "Introduction to Narrative" at the University of Lincoln. Structured around Seymour Chatman's excellent and accessible text, Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film (1978), the module gives...

I am currently Module Convenor for the MA optional module "London Now" on the University of Lincoln's MA in 21st Century Literature. The module is team-taught, and introduces students to the many and varied ways in which contemporary writers and dramatists have constructed the...

I've become fascinated with literary representation of transmigration (see, for example, my chapter on transmigration in David Mitchell: Critical Essays). One of the most interesting examples of this kind of writing is Caryl Phillips’ Crossing the River (Bloomsbury, 1993),...

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 April 2011 I co-organised "Spaces of Alterity: Conceptualising Counter-Hegemonic Sites, Practices and Narratives" at the University of Nottingham with Dr Michael Eades and Dr Adity Singh. The conference received an overwhelming response from academics, educators, artists and...

Whilst working at the University of Surrey, I designed a third-year optional module on "The Twenty-First Century British Novel." The module offers students the opportunity to explore the British novel and its formal and thematic developments from 2000 to the present day –...

During the course of organising the conference "Spaces of Alterity: Conceptualising Counter-Hegemonic Sites, Practices and Narratives" (which took place in April 2011 at the University of Nottingham), Dr Michael Eades, Dr Adity Singh and I were approached by colleagues at the...

In April 2011 I worked with the lovely Emily Wilczek, who co-organises the not-for-profit arts organisation Annexinema. As part of the "Spaces of Alterity: Conceptualising Counter-Hegemonic Sites, Practices and Narratives" conference at the University of Nottingham (which...

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 2010-2011 I was Module Convenor for the second-year core undergraduate module "Contemporary Literatures in a Global Context" at the University of Surrey. The module explored the way in which English literature is constructed within a global context, asking what it...

In 2010-2011 I taught on the core first-year undergraduate module "Genres and Contemporary Writing" at the University of Surrey.   Thumbnail image by Luis García under a CC BY-SA license.

As part of my interest in sharing academic scholarship with a broader audience beyond the university, I’ve published 2 shorter versions of author interviews with David Mitchell and Jon McGregor in the New Statesman. During the course of my research I’ve become fascinated with the...

In the summer of 2010 a good friend and remarkable poet, Éireann Lorsung, organised a seven-month project and poetry exchange "I am an American Poet: This is American Poetry" in Nottingham. I was fortunate enough to be able to interview two of the visiting poets, Zachary...

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...

In September 2009 I was invited to deliver a paper at the annual Workshops in Political Theory held at Manchester Metropolitan University. My paper explored the "inner-space fiction" of Doris Lessing through the conceptual framework of the philosophy of solidarity (as developed by...

Whilst researching my PhD at the University of Nottingham, I co-founded and co-organised the Marx Reading Group with my friends and colleagues Dr Adity Singh and Dr Alexander Dunst. To accompany the growing interest in the group, we decided to run annual film screenings of films and...

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...