Research Areas
British literature (especially nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first century), Scottish literature, environmental humanities, animal studies, cultural studies and critical theory, border studies, television studies, new formalism, energy humanities, postcritical reading practices, nineteenth-century periodicals and literature, postcolonial studies
Ongoing Projects
Energy Infrastructures in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical Press (Post-Doc / Habilitation)
This project focuses on representations of energy infrastructures in the nineteenth-century Anglophone periodical press. I posit that the periodical press of the nineteenth century played a central role in the creation of systems and epistemologies of energy that continue to structure our understanding of and relationship with energy today. In particular, I am interested in the affordances of the periodical as a miscellaneous literary form for creating and negotiating energy imaginaries, the connections between energy infrastructures and the British Empire, and how understanding these imaginaries and connections may help us grapple with our relationship with energy today. You can find out more about the project here.
Borders and the Environment in the Scottish Literary Imagination (Book Project, Bloomsbury)
Based on my PhD research, my book considers the potential vantage points and/or trajectories Scottish literature can offer for the revaluation of dominant frameworks underlying the relationship between borders and the environment as well as the parameters used to define both bordering processes and the environment. You can find out more about the PhD project here.
Networks
I’m currently active in the following roles and associations:
- Acting Publicity Officer and Membership Secretary at the British Association for Contemporary Literary Studies (BACLS)
- Founding member and Communications Officer at Arcadiana – A Blog about Literature, Culture and the Environment
- Assistant Editor at Green Letters
I’m an active member in the following associations: BACLS, EASLCE, ASLE-UKI, IASSL, ASLS, BAVS, DACH Victorianists
Other Projects
The Uses of Form: Theory – Methodology – Pedagogy
Together with Anne Korfmacher I am organising a collaborative and interactive online workshop titled “The Uses of Form” which will take place on 1-2 July 2022. We’re interested in different perspectives on new formalism(s) and want to explore the theoretical, methodological and pedagogical uses of form understood as “an arrangement of elements—an ordering, patterning, or shaping” with aesthetic, material, political and social dimensions (Caroline Levine, 2015). You can read more about the workshop and find our CfP on the project website: https://theusesofform.wordpress.com/
Arcadiana Blog and Community
Together with Nikoleta Zampaki, I founded Arcadiana. Arcadiana started as a blog about the environment in literature and culture associated with the European Association for the Study of Literature, Culture and the Environment (EASLCE) and then developed into a communal platform for postgraduate and early career researchers to get together in collaboratively organised events, network and support each other. The Arcadiana network organised reading groups, online writing retreats, a weekly cowriting session on Twitter, and a creative writers forum.
Arcadiana was created in response to discussions in the 14th EASCLE Webinar “Ecocritics Going Public” with Scott Slovic. During the webinar we discussed the important contributions that can be made by humanities scholars to public conversations about environmental issues. Literary and cultural enquiries help us to navigate our world and are vital in understanding our relationship to the nonhuman world, and the crises that we are facing at the moment. The blog provides a platform for postgraduate and early career researchers from the environmental humanities to communicate their research and thoughts on current events and discourses in a publicly accessible manner.