Steering Group
The PG CWWN is managed by a group of PhD candidates at a variety of institutions.
By its very nature as a postgraduate-led network, the Steering Group of the PG CWWN is a fluid and shifting team comprising a range of postgraduate researchers in both the early and latter stages of their doctoral study from institutions across the UK. It seeks to bring together a community of emerging scholars researching contemporary women’s writing.
The steering group is currently composed of:
Adèle Cook – University of Bedforshire
Adele is in the second year of a bursary funded PhD at the University of Bedfordshire. Working within the department for Performing Arts and English, her primary research focus is the reworking of the Arthuriad within contemporary children’s literature, with an emphasis on the representations of gender and nationality. Adele’s research interests involve psychoanalytic theory, post-structuralist feminism, the child reader and critical discourse analysis. As an undergraduate at the University of Bedfordshire she received the Ivy Black Award for Outstanding Achievement. She is currently a graduate-teaching assistant primarily teaching linguistics, and a copy editor for the Access Partnership Team which works to encourage young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to attend university. She joined the PGCWWN Steering Group in 2013.
You can follow her work on her academia.edu page.
Alex Pryce – University of Oxford
Alex is currently an AHRC-funded second year DPhil student at Wadham College, Oxford. Her thesis looks at tradition, feminism and influence in contemporary Northern Irish women’s poetry, particularly focusing on women writers emerging since the mid-1990s. She joined the steering group in October 2010, after completing an AHRC-funded MA in Modern Literature with distinction at the University of Leicester. She frequently reviews contemporary poetry for magazines and journals including Poetry Review, Poetry London and Poetry Wales. Alex also publishes her own poetry in reputable magazines, is an editor of the Poetry Archive and runs the national poetry podcasting website PoetCasting.
You can follow her work on her academia.edu page or on her website.
Claire Cowling – University of Hull
Claire is a PhD student in the Department of English at the University of Hull. Her thesis investigates the re-presentation and renegotiation of gender and genre in (women’s) historical detective fiction since the mid-1990s. Her research interests include crime fiction, critical theory relating to gender and sexuality, adaptation, trauma theory, and cultural criticism. She joined the Steering Group in 2013, having completed her MA in English with distinction at the Open University.
Claire is reviews editor for the Historical Novels Review, and a copy-editor and proofreader for peer-reviewed journal, Skepsi. She is also a prize-winning creative writer whose short stories have been published in literary and mainstream magazines in the UK, USA and Australia.
You can follow her work on her academia.edu page, or on her website.
Emma Young – University of Salford
Emma is a PhD student in the School of English, Sociology, Politics and Contemporary History at the University of Salford where she is funded by a Graduate Teaching Assistantship. Prior to this Emma completed her Masters degree in Modern Literature at the University of Leicester and studied at Bishop Grosseteste University College where she graduated with a First Class (Hon) degree in English Literature. Her thesis examines the work of British women writers of the short story since 1980 and considers the relationship between gender and genre with a particular focus on the influence of feminism and postmodernism. Her research locates contemporary writers within a British tradition of the short story whilst raising questions about the future of the genre in light of developments in digital publishing.
You can follow her work on her academia.edu page
James Bailey – University of Sheffield
James is a PhD student at the University of Sheffield. His thesis, funded by the AHRC, examines the treatment of time and free will in the fiction of Muriel Spark, and consults the author’s manuscripts and private letters, held in archives at the National Library of Scotland and the University of Tulsa. His research interests include modern and contemporary British fiction, studies of memory and autobiography, queer theory, postmodernism, and feminist criticism and theory.
James has taught modules in narrative prose and literary theory at the University of Sheffield. His research has been published in academic journals and in an edited collection entitled Representing Perpetrators (2012).
You can follow his work on his academia.edu page.
Michelle Green – University of Nottingham
Michelle is a PhD student in the American and Canadian Studies department at the University of Nottingham who specialises in Modern and Contemporary Literature. Michelle’s current research is funded by the Foundation of Canadian Studies and examines representations of fatness in North American fiction between 1975 and 2013. Her research engages with contemporary research in the Medical Humanities and the emerging field of Fat Studies, addressing systemic (anti)fat prejudice, social difference, and previously unexplored intersections of fat identity with gender, disability and nationality.
Michelle’s other positions include editor for the North American journal 49th Parallel, and publicity liaison for the AmCanNotts Postgraduate American and Canadian Studies Network for the University of Nottingham, a network she founded in 2013.
You can follow her work on her academia.edu page or on her website.
Former Steering Group Members:
Dr. Adele Jones 2006 – 2010 (Founding member)
Dr Ginette Carpenter 2006 – 2008 (Founding member)
Dr Katsura Sako 2006 – 2008 (Founding member)
Dr. Claire O’Callaghan 2008 –2013
Dr. Nadine Muller 2008 – 2011
Dr. Louise Sheridan 2008 – 2010
Dr. Kristin Ewins 2008 – 2009
Dr Cleo Hanaway 2008 – 2009
Ms. Katy Gledhill 2008 – 2009
Ms. Theresa Jamieson 2010 – 2011
Ms. Fran Pollard 2009 – 2010
Ms. Amy Rushton 2009 – 2013
Ms. Cat McGurren 2011– 2013
