Biography
I am a writer, musician, artist and poet, as well as being both a Teaching Fellow in HE and a Foundation student in Art and Design at West Dean College. I seek to bring together all of these different areas together in my teaching and scholarly practice.
Having worked as a writer and editor in the travel industry to fund my PG studies, I began my HE teaching career as a PhD student running specialist academic writing and editing workshops for doctoral and early career researchers. I completed my own doctoral research in 2012 - 'The image and the body in modern literature's representation of terrorism: Embodying the brutality of spectacle.'
Between 2010 and 2015, I taught critical theory, English literature, and literature and human rights courses at the Universities of Sussex, East Anglia and Chichester, before the combination of my research into terrorism and my own experiences of the precarious reality of entering the academy led to my current interest in Higher Education teaching and research practices.
Since 2013, I have run the Starting to Teach programme for PhD students, Associate Tutors and new lecturers at Sussex, and was made a permanent Teaching Fellow in Teaching, Learning and Assessment in HE in 2015. My work with people embarking on their journey into the academy, as well as my own journey, have highlighted for me the brutal nature of the current cultures surrounding early career teaching in HE. In turn, my research into the political, academic and aesthetic representations of post-1980s terrorism demonstrated the significant role academic practices have in creating conditions that lead directly to violence - be it labelled terrorist or counter-terrorist.
As a result, my current interests lie in examining and exposing the violence inherent in the way the academy constructs knowledge and possibilities for dismantling inherited practices in order to create new pedagogies grounded in what Irigaray has described as an ethics of difference. Central to this is a move away from the purely theoretical and traditionally academic, and a move toward embodied practice in both my teaching and scholarship. Who knows where this will take me next . . .
Role
Course convernor, Starting to Teach, Associate Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy pathway at Sussex
Teaching Fellow, Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education, Fellowship of Higher Education Academy pathway at Sussex
Convenor, Teaching and Learning Experience at Sussex series
Qualifications
Qualifications
Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education - University of Sussex
PhD in Critical Theory - University of Sussex (AHRC funded)
MA in Critical Theory (Distinction) - University of Sussex
BA in English Studies - University of Nottingham
Awards
Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
Student Led Teaching Award for Outstanding/Innovative Undergraduate Teaching 2013/14
Activities
Convenor of TaLES series, designed to bring new and experienced tutors and lecturers at the University of Sussex together to share ideas, concerns and inspiration.
Peer reviewer for Journal of Perspectives in Applied Academic Practice
Creator of Working with Luce Irigaray, website to enable PhD students and early career researchers from across the world to collaborate with Professor Irigaray and with each other.
Founding Chief Editor of Excursions: An Interdisciplinary Journal