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Staff Profile

Dr Alex Niven

Lecturer in English Literature

Background

Background

I grew up in the North East of England. Before arriving at Newcastle University in 2015 I worked in the music industry in Manchester (co-founding the band Everything Everything), completed a DPhil at the University of Oxford in 2013, then worked as assistant editor at New Left Review in London.

In 2014, I co-founded the publisher Repeater Books with Mark Fisher, Tariq Goddard, Tamar Shlaim, Matteo Mandarini and others. I am currently editor-at-large at Repeater and a columnist at Tribune magazine.


Qualifications

BA (Bristol)

MSt (Oxford)

DPhil (Oxford)

Research

Writing

I am the author/editor of 8 books:

Prose:

  • Folk Opposition (Zero, 2011; Italian trans. Nova Europa, 2020)
  • Definitely Maybe 33 1/3 (Bloomsbury, 2014)
  • New Model Island (Repeater, 2019)
  • The Repeater Book of Heroism (Repeater, 2022) (ed. with Tariq Goddard)
  • Letters of Basil Bunting (Oxford University Press, 2022) (ed.)
  • The North Will Rise Again (Bloomsbury, 2023)

Poetry:

  • The Last Tape (Zero, 2014) 
  • Newcastle, Endless (Canalside Press, 2021) 

[For journal articles and book chapters see 'Publications']


Media and public engagement

  • I write regular long and short-form journalism for a wide readership. Writing has appeared in the Guardian, the New York Times, New Statesman, the Independent, Pitchfork, Tribune, LA Review of Books, Jacobin, VICE, the Face, Salon and elsewhere. 
  • I have given public talks or lectures about my work at NYU, the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, Glasgow School of Art, Royal College of Art, the Houses of Parliament, the Durham Miners' Gala, Green Man Festival and elsewhere.
  • I have appeared in broadcast media features on BBC Radio 3, BBC Newcastle, RTÉ, ABC (Australia), Resonance FM, Novara Media and elsewhere.
  • My book New Model Island was adapted for a performance by the actor Toby Jones at Live Theatre, Newcastle in July 2022.


Supervision

  • I would be happy to supervise postgraduate students researching the art and identity of the north-east, modernist and contemporary poetry, intersections between literature, popular music and contemporary politics and the history and afterlife of the Anglo-American counterculture.
  • I have previously co-supervised two Northern Bridge/AHRC-funded doctoral projects to completion (Dr Jake Morris-Campbell and Dr Mandana Mashayekhi-Ghoyonloo) and I am currently supervising four more (Dafydd Sinden, Steve Kendall, Tamzin Mackie and Anna McCully Stewart).

 

Teaching

SEL3429: Deep North: Modern Literature of the North East (convenor)

SEL8540: Poetology (convenor)

SEL6632: Dissertation in English Literature



Publications