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Staff Profile

Dr Chloe Ashbridge

Lecturer in Modern & Contemporary Literature

Background

I joined the School of English at Newcastle in 2021. Before that, I was a Lecturer in English at Nottingham Trent University and held teaching and research positions at the University of Nottingham, the University of Leicester, and York St John University. I completed my AHRC-funded PhD at the University of Nottingham (2017 - 2021), where my thesis examined how contemporary writers in the North of England engage with constitutional tensions throughout the UK. Before my doctoral studies, I trained as a secondary English teacher and I maintain a keen interest in educational policy.

Research


My research interests address the relationship between British literature and political change since 1945, with a particular emphasis on race, class, nation, and the literary identity of Northern England. My first book, Rewriting the North: Contemporary British Fiction and the Politics of Devolution (Routledge, 2023) situates Northern England at the centre of a new devolutionary approach to contemporary British fiction. Through close readings of six contemporary authors – Sunjeev Sahota, Sarah Hall, Anthony Cartwright, Adam Thorpe, Fiona Mozley, and Sarah Moss – I map the emergence of a political English regionalism in the North that directly challenges the tenability of the centralised British state form.


My current major project is my second monograph, The Postcolonial North: Regional Writing and the Literary Economy of Black Britain (EUP) which provides the first study of Northern England’s postcolonial literary identity. Covering a range of novels, plays, and short story anthologies alongside the rise of the ‘cultural industries’, The Postcolonial North documents the innovative ways in which Black and Asian British writers across the region engage with Britain’s imperial decline and ongoing constitutional fragmentation.


I also have secondary research interests in literary representations of the body, particularly in relation to the shifting dynamics of class under neoliberalism.


I welcome enquiries for postgraduate supervision in any of these areas.


Teaching

I normally contribute to the following modules:


  • Revolutions (Year 1)
  • Contemporary Cultures (Year 2, Module Convenor)
  • Independent Research Project (Year 2)
  • Devolutionary Fictions: Literature and the British State Since 1960 (Year 3)
  • Dissertation (Year 3)
  • Research Methods 1 (Postgraduate)
Publications