Research: about

(deze pagina in het Nederlands)

Want to get in touch with me? Do drop me line! Looking for my CV? Read it here.

I am fascinated by the stories we tell about nature: how these stories change throughout time, in different circumstances and environments. How we connect nature to ideas about food. How the wild is resurfacing in contemporary British new nature writing. How the stories we tell affect how we imagine climate crisis.

For the past 10 years, my research has focused on representations of nature in especially contemporary British literature. Most recently this has led to my monograph Climate Change and the 21^st-century British Novel,  published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2018.

My work has been called “a timely and important intervention in the study of British literature and environment”. Scholars have also praised my innovative approach to literary analysis and ecocriticism.

I completed my PhD in English Literature at Radboud University (Nijmegen, the Netherlands) in 2012. My dissertation Ecocriticism and the Contemporary British Novel provided the first extensive ecocritical analysis of contemporary British fiction.

Over the past years, I’ve taught a wide variety of courses on literatures in English, ranging from survey courses on 17^th, 18^th, 19^th and 20^th-century literature, to courses on postcolonialism and literary theory, courses on contemporary literature (British and American), ecocriticism and urban literature, as well as classes on literary pedagogy.

I publish in leading journals, contribute to book collections, and frequently write reviews and peer review articles and book manuscripts for various journals and publishers. I’m also a founding board member of the Benelux Association for the Study of Art, Culture and the Environment.

I also work as a freelance coach for the self-employed, academics and other professionals. I help them find more time and be more productive.

In 2014 and 2016 I wrote a series of guest blog posts for Phd2Published:

Writing a book proposal:

Part 1: Should you turn your dissertation into a book?

Part 2: Writing a book proposal I

Part 3: Writing a book proposal II

Part 4: Deciding on a publisher

Writing a book:

Part 1: Writing a book, not a dissertation

Part 2: Writing a book: start to finish I

Part 3: Writing a book: start to finish II

Part 4: Writing a book: when life gets in the way

For more details on my publications, teaching and administrative functions, see my CV(last updated March 2019).