Originally from Derry, in the north-west of Ireland, I undertook undergraduate (2012-15) and postgraduate (2017-19) studies at Queen’s University Belfast, where I read English. Between those programmes, I also completed teacher training at the University of Nottingham, where I received the Wortley Prize for my academic and practical work. Following a spell of four years in which I taught English in Swiss high schools, I have started out on a DPhil at Wolfson College, Oxford, in which I aim to unpack how contemporary American campus novels engage with a range of cultural issues. A central contention is that such novels constitute a development which has seen their genre depart from its blueprinted ‘send-up’ of an insular academic world, instead grappling with broader cultural concerns such as labour casualisation, discrimination, and questions of meaningful living. Underpinning my research is a conception of education and art as twin social goods – each to be valued in themselves, yet with the capacity to reflect and enact change in their host cultures. As participation in higher education continues to rise, my project aims to destabilise the tired dichotomy which opposes the ‘ivory tower’ and the ‘real world’, not only placing the contemporary campus novel at the heart of higher educational discourse, but also demonstrating its distinctive contribution to a range of pressing cultural conversations which are taking place both within and beyond the universities’ gates.
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