My first lectureship was in Postcolonial Literature at the University of Leeds, though I took up my current role at the University of Birmingham in 2007. 

I have published widely on topics within black British and British Asian writing, including my book Race and Antiracism in Black British and British Asian Literature. I also have a more general interest in diverse postcolonial literatures and have published on a range of topics and authors in this field. I have recently completed an introduction to postcolonial literature as part of the Edinburgh University Press Critical Guides to Literature series.

I mostly teach contemporary literature, at all levels of the undergraduate programme. At postgraduate level I convene the MA strand in Contemporary Literary Cultures.

I supervise MPhil and PhD students on a range of literary and cross-disciplinary subjects and would welcome applications in the following areas:

• Black British and British Asian literature and culture
• Comparative postcolonial literature and theory
• Representations of race and minority identity

Current and former PhD supervisions include:

• A micro-history of black Handsworth
• Local and global identities in the contemporary Irish novel
• Arab-American Drama
• Narrative and Identity in the fiction of Kazuo Ishiguro
• Feminisms in the New Nigerian Novel 

The predominant focus of my research to date has been black British and British Asian writing, though I also have interests in contemporary Irish writing, early-twentieth-century Caribbean literature, and the aspects of the literatures of  Africa and South Asia. In addition to these, I have strong interests in cultural theory, especially theories of postcolonialism, race and minority culture. My abiding interest in the formation of ‘postcolonial literature’ as a commercial, critical, and pedagogical category particularly guides my current major project, in which I am interested in the form and significance of the postcolonial  literary essay. 

I am the Chair of the Postcolonial Studies Association. I am also a member of the European Association of Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies and the British Association for Irish Studies.

I regularly present at conferences across the UK, and in recent years have also spoken in Austria, Belgium, France, Italy, Ireland, Switzerland, and Turkey. In July 2011, Dr Clare Barker and I hosted a major international conference at Birmingham, entitled ‘Postcolonialism, Economies, Crises: Interdisciplinary Perspectives’.  

I am Head of Student Development and Support for the School of English, Drama, and American & Canadian Studies, which includes resposibility for promoting and developing Employability and overseeing Reasonable Adjustments for students for additional learning needs. I'm the English Department contact for Extenuating Circumstances, and the contact point within the Department for students on the English and American Literature programme. 

2014

Chapter in Book

‘Unhappy Bildungsromane’, in Andrea Levy: Contemporary Critical Perspectives  ed. by  Jeanette Baxter and David James, London and New York: Bloomsbury. Forthcoming 2014).

2013

Book

Postcolonial Literature (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Forthcoming October 2013)

2012

Articles in Journals

‘Ethnicity, Authenticity and Empathy in the Realist Novel and its Alternatives’, Contemporary Literature 53.4 (2012), 779-813.

‘Race, Community and Agency in Fictional Representations of Sport in Britain’, Moving Worlds 12.2 (2012), 126-35.

Chapters in Books

‘Centripetal and Concentric Narratives of Race: Caryl Phillips’s Dancing in the Dark  and Percival Everett’s Erasure’ in Caryl Phillips: Writing in the Key of Life, ed. by Bénédicte Ledent and Daria Tunca (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2012), pp. 359-74.

‘The Limits of Culture and Community in Monica Ali’s Brick Lane’, in Cultural Encounters: Critical Insights,  ed. by Nicolas Birns (Pasadena, CA: Salem Press, 2012), pp. 304-321.

2011

Chapters in Books

‘Claude McKay, Eric Walrond and the Locations of Black Internationalism’ in The Caribbean Short Story: Critical Perspectives ed. by Lucy Evans, Mark McWatt and Emma Smith (Leeds: Peepal Tree Press, 2011), pp. 141-54.  

‘Infrahuman Rights, Silence, and the Possibility of Communication in Recent Narratives of Illegality in Britain’, in Experiences of Freedom in Postcolonial Literatures and Cultures ed. by Shaul Bassi and Annalisa Oboe (London and New York: Routledge: 2011), pp. 141-50.

2010

Book

Race and Antiracism in Black British and British Asian Literature  (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2010). Paperback edition, July 2012.

Chapters in Books

‘Caribbean Modernism’, in The Oxford Handbook of Modernisms, ed. by Peter Brooker, Andrzej Gasiorek, Deborah Longworth, and Andrew Thacker (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press: 2010), pp. 910-25.

‘Ethnicity Politics in Contemporary Black British and British Asian Literature’ in Racism, Slavery, and Literature, ed. by Wolfgang Zach and Ulrich Pallua (Frankfurt: Peter Lang: 2010), pp. 47-59.

2009

Edited Collection

Tracing Black America in Black British Culture, jointly edited with Abigail Ward. Special Issue of Atlantic Studies: Literary, Cultural and Historical Perspectives  6.2 (2009).

Editorial introduction

‘Editorial: Tracing Black America in Black British Culture’, jointly authored with Abigail Ward, Atlantic Studies: Literary, Cultural and Historical Perspectives 6.2 (2009), 149-158.

Chapters in Books

‘History, Anthropology, Necromancy: Amitav Ghosh’s In an Antique Land, in Postcolonial Ghosts (Les Carnets du Cerpac 8), ed. by  Mélanie Joseph-Vilain and Judith Misrahi-Barak (Montpellier: Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée, 2009), pp. 305-321.

‘John Agard’, in Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 347: Twenty-First-Century ‘Black’ British Writers, ed. by R. Victoria Arana (Detroit: Bruccoli, Clark, Layman, 2009), pp. 20-28.

‘James Berry’, in Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 347: Twenty-First-Century ‘Black British’ Writers, ed. by R. Victoria Arana (Detroit: Bruccoli, Clark, Layman, 2009), pp. 65-73.

2008

Article in Journal

‘Daljit Nagra, Faber Poet: Burdens of Representation and Anxieties of Influence’, Journal of Commonwealth Literature 43.3 (2008), 95-108.

Chapter in Book

‘Cultural Conservatism and the Sites of Transformation in Meera Syal’s Life Isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee’, in British Asian Fiction: Framing the Contemporary, ed. by  Neil Murphy and Wai-chew Sim (Youngstown, NY: Cambria Press, 2008), pp. 119-139.

2007

Articles in Journals

‘Caryl Phillips’s Cambridge  and the (Re)Construction of Racial Identity’, Kunapipi: Journal of Postcolonial Writing & Culture  28.1 (2007), 70-81.

‘S. I. Martin’s Incomparable World and the Possibilities for Black British Historical Fiction’, Journal of Postcolonial Writing  43.2 (2007), 203-215.

2005

Chapters in Books

‘Cosmopolitanism and Marginalisation in Bernardine Evaristo’s The Emperor’s Babe’, in Write Black, Write British: From Post Colonial to Black British Literature, ed. by Kadija Sesay (London: Hansib, 2005), pp. 165-178.

‘Reading the “Uncle Tom” Character in Fred D’Aguiar’s The Longest Memory’, in Revisiting Slave Narratives  (Les Carnets du Cerpac 2), ed. by Judith Misrahi-Barak (Montpellier: Université Montpellier Services des Publications, 2005), pp. 295-310.

‘Citizenship, Identity, and Illegal Immigrants: Manzu Islam’s Burrow’ in The Future of Identity  (University of Salford Working Papers in Contemporary History and Politics 30), ed. by Katherine Burkitt and Giles Simon, (Salford: University of Salford, 2005), pp. 31-44. 

2004

Article in Journal

 ‘Anti-Racism, the Nation-State and Contemporary Black British Literature’, Journal of Commonwealth Literature,  39.2 (2004), 29-43.