Research

I hold 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 studied an MA in Leiden University’s “Literature in Society: Europe and Beyond” 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 21st century stories of crisis, resistance, and hope. I call them “Counter-Models”.

Published scholarship

  • “Humanising Harmont: Sense of Place and Desire in the Strugatsky Brothers’ Roadside Picnic.” Foundation, Vol. 50.3, No. 140, 2021.
  • “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, Forthcoming 2024.

Conference presentations

  • “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.
  • “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.
  • “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.
  • “‘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.
  • “Crisis, Counter-speculation, Change: Reimagining the 2008 Financial Crisis in Yanis Varoufakis’s Another Now.” SFRA 2024. Tartu, Estonia. May 7-11, 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.
  • “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. Forthcoming, 2024.