Conferences

2023

[keynote] "Roundtable: Future Transitions" Transitions, ASLE-UKI Conference, University of Liverpool (2023).

"Speculating About Agricultural Catastrophe in A.G. Street’s Already Walks Tomorrow (1938)." Transitions, ASLE-UKI Conference, University of Liverpool (2023).

"Agriculture and Speculation in A.G. Street’s Already Walks Tomorrow (1938)." Disruptive Imaginations, Science Fiction Research Association Annual Conference, TU Dresden (2023).

[keynote] "Terraforming, Geoengineering and Experiments in Policy and Governance." Current Research In Speculative Fictions 2023, The University of Liverpool (2023).

2022

[keynote] “Anything Could Be Happening in That Pot. Life Could Be Spontaneously Creating”: Science Fiction and Criticism.” Arts and Humanities Annual PGR Conference, Swansea University (2022).

“Apocalypse and Utopia: Narrating Rural Change in Welsh Science Fiction.” Epochs, Ages, and Cycles: Time and the Environment, ASLE-UKI Conference, Northumbria University (2022).

“Narrating Rural Change: Visions of the Future and Farming in Welsh Science Fiction.” Futures from the Margins, Science Fiction Research Association Annual Conference, University of Oslo (2022).

2021

“Fragmentation, Coherence and Worldbuilding in Magic: The Gathering.” The Future of/as Inequality, Science Fiction Research Association Annual Conference, Seneca College (2021).

2019

[roundtable] “Health, Medicine and the Natural World: Making Connections.” Research Across Boundaries, Swansea University (2019).

2018

“Modelling What Could Be: Science Fiction’s Environmental Futures.” Worlding SF: Building, Inhabiting, and Understanding SF Universes, Karl-Franzens Universität Graz (2018).

with Arianna Ciula, “A Corpus Linguistic Study of ‘Models’ and ‘Modelling’: Intellectual and Technical Challenges.” Digital Humanities Congress 2018, The University of Sheffield (2018).

“Carbon-Based Energy Systems in Science Fiction Short Stories.” Petrocultures 2018: Transitions, The University of Glasgow (2018).

with Arianna Ciula. “A Corpus Linguistic Study of ‘Models’ and ‘Modelling’: Intellectual and Technical Challenges.” Computational Methods for Literary-Historical Textual Scholarship, De Montfort University (2018).

“The Drill in Science Fiction and Fracking.” Current Research In Speculative Fictions 2018, The University of Liverpool (2018).

2017

[keynote] “‘Old Genotypes in New Bodies’: Intimations of Posthumanity in Science Fiction.” Organic Systems: Environments, Bodies and Cultures in Science Fiction, London Science Fiction Research Community, hosted by Birkbeck University (2017).

“‘The Bottom Line of My Texts is in Oil’: Reza Negarestani’s Cyclonopedia, or, Complicity with Anonymous Arterials.” Science Fiction Research Association Annual Conference, University of Riverside (2017).

“Dystopia and Utopia at the Cusp in Cory Doctorow’s Walkaway: A Novel.” Dystopia Now, Birkbeck University (2017).

2016

‘“A Horrible Global Narcissism, Permanent and Inescapable”: Discourses of Posthumanity in Karl Schroeder’s Ventus.’ Science Fiction Research Association Annual Conference, The University of Liverpool (2016).

2015

“‘This Country Called Sustainability’: Energy and Climate Change in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Science in the Capital Trilogy.” ASLE-UKI Biennial Conference: Green Knowledge, Cambridge (2015).

“The Discursive Representation of Foxes and Bees in the Twittersphere.” Corpus Linguistics 2015, The University of Lancaster (2015).

“Drilling, the Extractive Industries and Sustainability in Science Fiction.” Sci-Fi Symposium, University of Malta (2015).

“The Independent Entrepreneur and the Terraforming of Mars.” Locating Fantastika, The University of Lancaster (2015).

“Sustainability and the Underground in Science Fiction.” Notes from the Underground: The Depths of Environmental Arts, Culture and Justice, ASLE Biennial Conference, University of Idaho (2015).

[invited talk] “‘This Country Called Sustainability’: Utopianism and Climate Change.” Helion International Conference: Utopia, Science Fiction, and Their Significant Others in the 21st Century, Timișoara, Romania (2015).

“‘The Rich Sun, / The Power of Growth, the Lever of the Future’: The Sun in Science Fiction.” British Society for Literature and Science, The University of Liverpool (2015).

“‘It Is One Story’: Writing a Global Alternative History in Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Years of Rice and Salt.” Sideways in Time: Alternate History and Counterfactual Narratives Conference, The University of Liverpool (2015).

2014

with Alison Sealey. “The Discursive Representation of Animals in the Twittersphere.” Corpus Linguistics in the South #8: Voices from Below. Corpus Linguistics and Social Media, University of Reading (2014).

with Alison Sealey. “Dogs, the Law, and Language: A Discourse of Danger.” Dogs, Owners & Responsibility: Law in the Doghouse? Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Birmingham (2014).

“‘New Aberrant Animal Types in Our Experimental Gardens’: Genetic Engineering, Terraforming and the Human-Animal Relationship.” SF/F Now, University of Warwick (2014).

“‘Something That Looked Partly Like a Woman Partly Like a Cat’: Deliquescence, Hybridity and the Animal in the Kefahuchi Tract Trilogy.” Irradiating the Object, University of Warwick (2014).

“Terraforming and the City.” Loncon 3: The 72nd World Science Fiction Convention, ExCeL Centre, London (2014).

“‘His Labor is a Chant, / His Idleness a Tune’: A Corpus Linguistic Analysis of Representations of the Bee in News Media.” Reading Animals: An International English Studies Conference, University of Sheffield (2014).

“‘Then Came Pantropy’: Bodily Adaptation and Human-Animal Relationships in Terraforming Narratives.” Feminism, Fans, and the Future: Traveling the Shifting Worlds of Writers, Readers, Gender, and Race in Science Fiction, Science Fiction Research Association, Inn on the Park, Madison, WI (2014).

2013

“‘Their Acts, Mortal and Cast Away, / Are Crystalled in the Melt of History’: Frederick Turner’s Genesis: An Epic Poem (1988).” Swords, Sorcery, Sandals and Space: The Fantastika and the Classical World, A Science Fiction Foundation Conference, The University of Liverpool (2013).

“‘The Goal of Martian Economics is not Sustainable Development but a Sustainable Prosperity for the Entire Biosphere’: Science Fiction and the Sustainability Debate.” Current Research In Speculative Fictions 2013, The University of Liverpool (2013).

“‘There are Among us Even Now Dreamers and Builders Ready to Repeat the Age-Old Process of Splitting the Atom of Time’: Imagining the Future through Science Fiction.” Paradise Lost? The World of 2050, Bangor University (2013).

2012

“‘All Energy is Borrowed’: Terraforming: A Master Motif for Physical and Cultural Re(Up)cycling.’ Composting Culture: Literature, Nature, Popular Culture, Science, ASLE-UKI Conference, University of Worcester (2012).

2011

“Science and Nature in Science Fiction.” Emergent Critical Environments: Where Next For Ecology and the Humanities? ASLE-UKI Postgraduate Conference, Queen Mary, University of London (2011).

“‘A Fantastic Reflex of Itself, An Echo, A Symbol, A Myth, A Crazy Dream’: Gaian Anticipations and Terraforming as Landscaping Nature’s Otherness in Pre-1960s Scientific Romance and Solaris.” Dreams Not Only American: Science Fiction’s Transatlantic Transactions, SFRA Annual Conference, Maria-Curie Sklodowska University, Lublin, Poland (2011).

2010

“Environmental Philosophy in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy: Fragility and Nature’s Otherness.” Annual Postgraduate Conference, The University of Liverpool (2010).

2009

“Confronting or Sidestepping Race in SF Film Adaptation?: I, Robot and I Am Legend.” Lost in Translation: Mediation, Adaptation and Translation, Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Conference, University of Leicester (2009).

“Ecopolitics and Terraforming: Building Critical Spaces.” Critical Theory: The Text and the World, Postgraduate Conference, University of Exeter (2009).

“Time as Diverse Experience in Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life.’” The Future Ain’t What It Used to Be: Interactions of Past, Present and Future in Literature and Visual Media, 7th Annual English Postgraduate Conference, University of Dundee (2009).

“Sounding Vivisection and Genetic Engineering in Science Fiction: Gene Wolfe’s ‘The Woman Who Loved the Centaur Pholus’ in Dialogue with H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau.” Annual Postgraduate Conference, The University of Liverpool (2009).