Projects and Media

Education

PhD (University of Liverpool)

MA Science Fiction Studies (University of Liverpool)
BA English Literature and Language (University of Liverpool)

Awards and Scholarships

British Science Association's Jacob Brownowski Prize for Science and the Arts (2020)

The Science Fiction Research Association Mary Kay Bray Award (2013)
AHRC travel bursary for Silent Spring workshop (x2 2013)
Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction Essay Prize (2011)
John Lennon Memorial Scholarship
Allott Graduate Scholarship
The University of Liverpool Studentship

SFRA 2014 Travel Grant
ASLE-UKI Postgraduate Conference Award 2012
School of English Graduate Conference Fund (Travel Grant 2009, 2011, 2011, 2012)
James Cross Prize (2005)
Elizabeth James University Undergraduate Scholarship (2004)

Memberships

Affiliate member of the Olaf Stapledon Centre for Speculative Futures, The University of Liverpool (2018–Current)

Honorary Fellow, The University of Liverpool (2018–2021)

Member of the Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA)

Member of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment, UK and Ireland (ASLE–UKI)
Honorary member of HELION

Terraforming: Ecopolitical Transformations and Environmentalism in Science Fiction

My book was published by Liverpool University Press in June 2016. It grew out of archival research I conducted at The Science Fiction Foundation Collection, based at The University of Liverpool's Special Collections and Archives.

It examines how the motif of terraforming was transformed in science fiction since the beginning of the 20th century, and shows how it allows us to critically engage with issues related to geoengineering, ecology, climate change and environmentalism.

Head here for a synopsis of the book and for reviews.

Modelling Between Digital and Humanities: Thinking in Practice

October 2017—April 2018

My second postdoctoral appointment was the Volkswagen-funded project, "Modelling Between Digital and Humanities: Thinking in Practice", based at King's Digital Lab, King's College London. I applied corpus linguistic methodologies to analyse academic journal articles in the humanities to investigate how these disciplines make use of modelling and modelling processes, and to identify how these uses converge and diverge. We were interested not only in how the digital humanities' use of modelling functions as a way to foster interdisciplinarity, but also how modelling creates such spaces within the broader field of the humanities. Another area of interest was how modelling in the humanities is informed by the insights generated through "trading zones" created by disciplines in the humanities.

More details can be found at the project blog: http://modellingdh.uni-koeln.de/?lang=de .

'People', 'Products', 'Pests' and 'Pets': The Discursive Representation of Animals

October 2013—January 2016

I completed my first postdoctoral appointment as a Research Associate on the Leverhulme-funded project, “‘People’, ‘Products’, ‘Pests’ and ‘Pets: The Discursive Representation of Animals,’” a Corpus Linguistics (Digital Humanities) project that uses specialised computer software to analyse large numbers of digitised texts to understand the ways animals are represented in spoken and written discourse in the UK from 1995–2015. Genres analysed include news media, legislation, scientific journal articles, transcribed speech from interviews and focus groups and promotional food websites.

More details can be found at the project blog: http://animaldiscourse.wordpress.com/.

@DiscourseAnimal

https://www.facebook.com/PeopleProductsPestsPets

Predictor Podcast Ep 80 - People, Products, Pests and Pets.

Listen to the ten minute interview with The University of Birmingham's Ideas Lab, Professor Alison Sealey and myself. It introduces some of the thinking behind the 'People, Products, Pests and Pets' project.

Visit Ideas Lab for more podcasts at http://www.ideaslab.bham.ac.uk/ideaslab_podcast.htm.

Videos of the Talks:

“‘A Kind of Continuous Conceptual Drunkenness’? Terraforming and Analogy in Science Fiction.” The Final Frontier: Mythologies of Outer Space, Calgary Institute of the Humanities (2022).

“‘A Symbiotic Culture, Earth and Mars’: The Imagination of Mars in Science Fiction.” DePaul Humanities Centre, DePaul University, Chicago (17th October 2016). [talk begins at 38:28)

with Alison Sealey. ‘Representing Animals in Scientific Journals: A Corpus Linguistic Approach’. Arts and Science Festival, University of Birmingham, 2014.

‘Science and Nature in Science Fiction’, Emergent Critical Environments: Where Next for Ecology and the Humanites?, ASLE-UKI Postgraduate Conference, Queen Mary, University of London, September 2011.