Postcolonial Studies
Postcolonial studies is an established area within the School, with a strong Faculty presence (see the Postcolonial Research Group). It is also a group with growing national and international connections, securing substantial external funding for research in recent years. Colleagues have established collaborative links with the University of Delhi, the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and a number of other institutions.
Several members of School staff work principally in this area:
-
Dr Laura Fish, RCUK Fellow
-
Professor Jackie Kay, Professor of Creative Writing
-
Dr James Procter, Reader in Postcolonial Literature
-
Dr Neelam Srivastava, Senior Lecturer in Postcolonial Literature
They share a range of research interests and expertise in creative writing, postcolonial theory, anti-colonial and postcolonial cinema, black British writing, and the literatures of Africa, South Asia, and the Caribbean.
Major writers who have visited Newcastle in recent years include Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Nuruddin Farah, Caryl Phillips, Grace Nichols, Andrea Levy, Kazuo Ishiguro, Fred D’Aguiar, Helen Oyeyemi, Mohsin Hamid, Amit Chaudhuri, Kamila Shamsie, Pankaj Mishra and Tahmima Anam.
Colleagues working in this area have organized a number of international and high-profile events over the past few years. In June 2011, the School held an international conference on ‘Postcolonial Translation: Multiple Geographies, Multi-lingual Contexts’. In October 2008, with the collaboration of the Newcastle Centre for Literary Arts, we organised ‘East is North-East: South Asian Writers at SAMA’, a major literary festival of writers from the subcontinent, which was held at the Sage Gateshead.
Colleagues are convenors of and contributors to the faculty-wide Postcolonial Research Group. Established in 2002, this inter-disciplinary group provides a forum within Newcastle University for developing research initiatives relating to postcolonial studies, bringing together both members of staff and postgraduate students working in this area in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. The activities of the Group include a speaker series and a number of seminars and symposia throughout the year. All of these events have helped to establish Newcastle as a leading site for research in the field of postcolonial studies, both within the UK and internationally.
Interested staff and students who would like to join the group’s e-mail list should contact James Procter.
Staff working in this area have published several books.
Postgraduates
The School has a very successful group of home and international working postgraduates in Postcolonial Literature, and we have been particularly successful at securing AHRC-funded scholarships in recent years. Current doctoral projects include: representations of political torture in postcolonial theory, literature and film; Caribbean women’s literature; and literary narratives of 9/11. Colleagues also contribute to the MA In Modern and Contemporary Studies.
Externally funded projects
The Leverhulme Trust funded Research Network in 'Postcolonial Translation: The Case of South Asia' is a 3-year collaborative project between Newcastle and other UK and Indian universities, on theories and practices of translation in 5 Indian languages: Bengali, English, Hindi, Malayalam, and Tamil.
The 'Devolving Diasporas: Migration and Reception in Central Scotland, 1980 – present' was funded by a substantial Research Grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.