Utopia in Dark Times

I've been invited to give a public lecture as part of Durham University Palace Green Library's Exhibition on "Time Machines: The Past, the Future, and How Stories Take Us There" on Wednesday 7th June 2017. My talk will be titled "Utopia in Dark Times" (see here for...

King’s Lecture

I've been invited this Autumn to deliver a lecture as part of a new series, "King's Fantastic Talks," organised by Dr Rhys Williams. My lecture will take place on 29th October at King's College London's campus and is titled "What's New About the Novum? SF,...

SF/F Now Aug24

SF/F Now

In August 2014, I was invited to give a workshop on "Utopian Theory & Practice" for the SF/F Now conference at the University of Warwick with Dr Lisa Garforth (Newcastle University). SF/F Now was held as a 2-day international conference exploring the...

Post-Apocalypse Apr25

Post-Apocalypse

One of the chapters of my monograph, Fictions of the Not Yet: Time and the 21st Century British Novel, explores the genre of post-apocalypse through a reading of Ernst Bloch's philosophy of "natural historical time." Many critics have commented upon the wave of SF and...

Ernst Bloch

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...