Research

I have a BA in History from the University of Nottingham. My thesis was a multidisciplinary study of the South Sea Bubble of 1720 – England’s first financial crash.

Later, I joined Leiden University’s “Literature in Society: Europe and Beyond” MA programme. My thesis, titled “False Profits: Futurology and Futurity in Contemporary Crisis Fiction”, considered literary representations of people who predict the future. I graduated Summa Cum Laude.

Now, I’m conducting doctoral research at Birkbeck, University of London. I’m looking at contemporary science fiction texts that explore contingency and change. I call them “Counter-Models”. The idea is that these miniature worlds critically reflect wider systems.

I teach on Birkbeck’s BA English and Creative Writing programme, covering the development of the novel from its origins to (post)modernity. I’ve also lectured on representations of climate change in science fiction games and graphic narratives at the University of Oxford.

In 2025, I joined MOSF Journal of Science Fiction‘s editorial team. It’s an open-access, peer-reviewed publication that takes an interdisciplinary approach to all things SF (books, games, film, oral history, and more). I manage peer review, edit submissions, and pitch in on stuff like AI policy.

I’m available for guest lectures, workshops, panels, editing, and peer review.

Research interests include:

• Speculative/science fiction (sf)
• Literary models
• Critical utopias and dystopias
• Alternate histories and counterfactuality
• Representations of digital connectivity and communities
• Intersections between sf and the technology sector
• Game design and environmental storytelling
• Ecocriticism
• (Poly)crisis

Published scholarship

• “Deconstructing the Universal Translator: Science Fiction, AI, and the Myth of Seamless Communication’.” [Work in progress with Irida Altman].
• “Not Yet: Andor’s Insurrectionary Utopianism.” Andor Analysed Part 2, edited by Jamie Woodcock. Red Futures, 2026 [Forthcoming].
• “Silicon Dreams, Corporate Realities.” MOSF Journal of Science Fiction, Vol. 7, No. 2, 2025 [Forthcoming].
• “The Low Bar: Crisis and Utopia in M. E. O’Brien and Eman Abdelhadi’s Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052–2072.” SFRA Review, Vol. 54, No. 3, 2024.
• “Humanising Harmont: Sense of Place and Desire in the Strugatsky Brothers’ Roadside Picnic.” Foundation, Vol. 50.3, No. 140, 2021.

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Guest lectures, workshops, and conference papers

• “Utopia, Dystopia and the Post-Capitalist State.” Interdisciplinary workshop hosted with UCL’s Centre for Capitalism Studies. London, UK. December 11, 2025 [Organiser and Chair].
• “Modelling utopia.” UTOPIA Symposium hosted by Birkbeck College. London, UK. July 17, 2025.
• “Speculating Into the void: Abstraction and embodiment in contemporary finance fiction.” Birkbeck CACC Doctoral Conference: (De)Composition. London, UK. June 12, 2025.
• “Writing counter-speculation: The aesthetics of digital activism in contemporary finance fiction.” Speculating the Future: Fictional Worlds and Financial Realities. International workshop hosted at Roskilde University. May 22-23, 2025.
• “Science fiction as model: From artificial intelligence to alternative realities.” BSLS 2025. Lancaster, UK. April 10-12, 2025.
• “Climate change in contemporary Science Fiction games and graphic narratives.” Climate Change in Science Fiction: Film, Literature and Gaming. Day course hosted by The University of Oxford: Department for Continuing Education. February 1, 2025.
• “Enforcing post-capitalist utopia, from policing to pikes.” Historical Materialism: Countering the Plague. London, UK. November 7-10, 2024.
• “The Post-Soviet Monster: Posthuman growths and nostalgia in Tatyana Tolstaya’s The Slynx and Vladimir Sorokin’s Day of the Oprichnik.” CRSF 2024. Liverpool, UK. July 4-5, 2024.
•  “‘A beautifully crafted pike’: Violence and Utopia in N. K. Jemisin’s The Ones Who Stay and Fight.” Birkbeck CACC Doctoral Conference: The Futures. London, UK. June 20, 2024.
• “Crisis, Counter-speculation, Change: Reimagining the 2008 Financial Crisis in Yanis Varoufakis’s Another Now.” SFRA 2024. Tartu, Estonia. May 7-11, 2024.
• “‘You’ll always be someone’s bitch’: Chronic crisis and cruel optimism in Christos Ikonomou’s The Union of Bodies.” Birkbeck ETCW Summer Conference: Feeling (Un)Feeling. London, UK. June 22, 2023.
• “Dreaming of Leela: Counter-speculation, signal, and noise in Hari Kunzru’s Transmission.” Transmission: Constructions of Identity XI. Cluj-Napoca, Romania. May 18-20, 2023.
• “Dreaming and dancing: The speculative communities of contemporary crisis fiction.” Social Movements and Technology: Cultural Social and Political Thought (CSPT) Annual Conference. Victoria, Canada. May 5-6, 2023.
• “Black sand: Revisiting the perverse ecology of David Foster Wallace’s The Broom of the System.” 25 Years of Infinite Jest. Amsterdam, Netherlands. October 28-30, 2021.