Dr Agnes Woolley

Overview

Biography

Dr Agnes Woolley is Lecturer in Transnational Literature and Migration Cultures at Birkbeck, University of London. Before joining Birkbeck in 2017, she was Lecturer in Contemporary Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London, and has also taught at the University of Lincoln, the University of Derby and the University of Leeds.

Agnes's research interests are in contemporary and postcolonial literature, theatre and film, with a focus on concepts of migration and diaspora. She is the author of Contemporary Asylum Narratives: Representing Refugees in the Twenty-First Century (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) and has published extensively on asylum, refugee arts, climate change and contemporary literature. Her current research examines the interrelationship between contemporary screen cultures and geopolitical refugee discourses in the forthcoming book Moving Images: Refugees in Contemporary Screen Culture (Bloomsbury, forthcoming, 2022). She is a regular contributor to openDemocracy, reporting on migration issues and works with grassroots refugee organisations in London.

Qualifications

• Ph. D.,, University of Leeds, 2011
• M. A., , School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 2004
• B. A., , University of Leeds, 2003

Administrative responsibilities

• Programme Director of the MA Migration Literatures and Cultures
• Admissions Tutor for the BA Liberal Arts
• First Year Tutor for BA Liberal Arts

Professional activities

Mentor for the Council for At-Risk Academics (CARA) Syria Programme 

Member of the Arts and Humanities Research Council Peer Review College

Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

Member of the British Association for Contemporary Literary Studies and the Postcolonial Studies Association. 

Member of the editorial boards for NuBE, Nuova Biblioteca Europea and Frontiers. Review Editor for Frontiers: Refugees and Conflict. 

Honours and awards

• Teaching Excellence Award for undergraduate course 'Seeking Asylum in the Twenty-First Century', Royal Holloway, University of London, November 2016
• College Performance Award, Royal Holloway, University of London, November 2016

Research

Research interests

• Refugee arts
• Diasporic literature and film
• Contemporary, postcolonial and transnational literature and culture

Research overview

I work on the literature and culture of migration, with a special interest in forced migration. My research is interdisciplinary and collaborative, drawing on refugee and diaspora studies as well as literary and cultural methodologies.  

Research Centres and Institutes

• Centre for Contemporary Literature
• Senior Research Associate, Refugee Law Initiative, School of Advanced Study

Supervision and teaching

Supervision

Supervisions within Birkbeck:

6

I welcome enquiries from prospective PhD students who are interested in undertaking research in any of my areas of research interest. Prospective students should submit an informal inquiry, followed by a proposal of 2,000 - 4,000 words, including an indicative bibliography.

Current doctoral researchers

• AZAD SHARMA

  Nature of supervision:

  Joint Principal Supervisor, Oct 2021 onwards

  Title of thesis:

  Post-Apartheid as Method: Late Colonialism, Creolisation, and Creative-Critical Literary Testimony.

  Description:

  My practice-based PhD will produce a novel which explores Post-Apartheid traumas across different generations and scales, from world-historical to personal. It focuses on a tri-generational London-based family and juxtaposes older generation’s memories of Apartheid with challenges faced by a graduate student in the wake of Brexit. It captures unique transnational experiences of a twice-displaced racialised community. I use interdisciplinary research, allowing critical discourse to inform creative narrative. I work with: Apartheid-era memoirs, field interviews, trauma and affect theories, phenomenologies of touch (haptics), human rights, race politics, and archival records of Indian-South-African activists. The novel is prefaced by a critical foreword which explores the ongoing ramifications of colonialism in the 21st Century UK in which culture is seen as a space geared towards war, racism, and ethnic absolutism. 

• KESHIA RICHARDS

  Nature of supervision:

  Joint Principal Supervisor, Oct 2020 onwards

• NIVEDITA NAIR

  Nature of supervision:

  Joint Principal Supervisor, Jul 2023 onwards

  Title of thesis:

  Irony and Sincerity in Contemporary Visual Aesthetics

Teaching

Teaching modules

• Theorising the Contemporary, Contemporary Theorising (AREN095S7)
• Connecting the Arts (AREN126S5)
• Doing English (AREN208Z4)
• The Creative Critical Seam (AREN221S6)
• Storytelling: Narrative Archetypes, Forms and Techniques (AREN256S4)
• Literature, Empire and Race (ENHU004S5)
• The Post-War: 1945 to the present (ENHU050S7)

Publications