I’m a Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Writing and Culture at the University of York.
I’ve been teaching in higher education since 2009, with a focus on literature, race, and culture. My doctoral research explored representations of racial passing in African American women’s writing. I’ve written extensively on the work of Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston, Gloria Naylor, Dorothy West, and Nella Larsen.
At York, I offer a specialist module on contemporary Black literature and film. It examines work by Caleb Azumah Nelson, Brandon Taylor, Raven Leilani, Natasha Brown, Rachel Long, Steve McQueen, Barry Jenkins, and Kayo Chingonyi (among others). I’m particularly interested in questions of representation, history, the literary marketplace, uncertainty, ambiguity, affect, and Black temporality. These interests also shape my practice-based research as a poet and non-fiction writer.
I’ve held a range of senior leadership positions in learning and teaching, including School Learning and Teaching Lead (at York St John University) and Director of Undergraduate Teaching (at the University of York). I supervise a number of PhD projects (including theses on wrestling, nature writing, Black speculative fiction, and African American women’s writing). I was a member of the Runnymede Trust’s Emerging Scholars Forum (contributing to the Aiming Higher Report) and I was a 2025 fellow of The York Policy Engine. I remain interested in the relationship between race, higher education, and literary studies.
Click here to see my staff profile.
Here are some examples of my academic work organised by interest.
Pedagogy, reading, and race
BBC Radio 3 - The Essay: Losing Yourself in Books (March 2025)
BBC Free Thinking (Why Read?) hosted by Shahidha Bari feat. Jonathan Egid, Gabriel Gatehouse, Rana Mitter, Elif Shafak, & Tiffany Watt Smith (October 2024)
“Notes From the Edge: Reflections on Black Literature, Feeling, and Teaching.” Contemporary Literature from the Classroom in Post-45 Contemporaries (2024).
In Conversation with Kwame Kwei-Armah.” Beneatha’s Place Programme (Young Vic, 2023).
Black women’s writing
BBC Radio 4: Great Lives: Adjoa Andoh on Zora Neale Hurston, Jan 2023.
The Ancestor, Passing, and Imagination in Toni Morrison’s God Help the Child.” The Bloomsbury Handbook to Toni Morrison edited by Linda Wagner-Martin and Kelly Reames (2023).
BBC Radio 4: Woman’s Hour - interviewed by Jenni Murray about the career of Zora Neale Hurston (2013).
“Grace Jones: Cyborg Memoirist.” Music/Memory/Memoir edited by Robert Edgar, Fraser Mann, Helen Pleasance. New York: Bloomsbury, 2019.
“Zora Neale Hurston and the Paradox of Patronage.” Critical Insights: Zora Neale Hurston edited by Sharon Lynette Jones. Ipswich: Salem Press, 2013.
Racial ambiguity, illegibility, and ‘confusion’
BBC Radio 4: Woman’s Hour - interviewed by Jenni Murray about Brit Bennett’s novel The Vanishing Half (2020)
"Passing for white”: how a taboo film genre is being revived to expose racial privilege.’ Guardian, 2018.
Grappling and Ga(y)zing: Gender, Sexuality, and Performance in the WWE Debut of Goldust.” Performance and Pro Wrestling. edited by Broderick Chow, Laine Eero, Claire Warden. London: Routledge, 2016.
“The Revenant Mulatta” (academic paper - University of Cambridge, February 2022)
“Don Draper’s Mammy: Racial Ambiguity in AMC’s Mad Men” (academic paper - University of Sussex, November 2021)
“Re-imagining Passing: A Feminist Project" (academic paper - University of York February 2019)
“Passing and Its Transatlantic Contexts.” (academic paper - University of Glasgow, November 2018)
“Passing Amid Protest” (academic paper - Kings College London, April 2018, British Association of American Studies Conference)
“Beyond the Passing-For-White Figure in Post-Black Comedy” (academic paper University of Leeds 2014, Race in the Americas Seminar)
Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Work
“Notes on Decolonising the Curriculum.” BLACKLINES: The Journal of Black British Writing, Issue 1, Summer 2021.
Contributor - Aiming Higher: Race, Inequality, and the Academy (Runnymede Trust, 2015), edited by Jason Arday and Claire Alexander - launched at the All Party Parliamentary Group on Race and Community by David Lammy MP.
Keynote: “Navigating the Library as a Researcher of Colour.” UX in Libraries Yearbook, June 2018
“Black, female, and postgraduate: why I cannot be the only one.” Guardian, 2013.
I’ve been invited to speak about my work in this area at institutions across the UK, including University of Edinburgh, the University of Huddersfield, the University of Oxford, the University of Sheffield.