I gained a first-class degree in English and American Literature at the University of Kent in 1987 where I met (and was inspired by) a number of emerging young Caribbean writers. I went straight on to the newly founded Centre for Caribbean Studies at the University of Warwick where I researched the politics of non-standard language use in literary texts from the UK and the Caribbean. In 1991, I was one of the first to graduate from the Centre with a PhD in Caribbean Studies (Language and Literature of the Anglophone Caribbean).
Since then I have taught at the Universities of Hull, Warwick, Northampton and York St John (twice, from 1992 to 1997 and from 2005 to the present). I have won travel grants to research in the Caribbean and have been asked to give keynotes or guest lectures on topics relating to Food Studies, Black British and Caribbean literatures at Universities in the Caribbean, Germany, Belgium, Mallorca and Sri Lanka, as well as for the British Council in Estonia as part of 'British Week'.
My main research interests are in Caribbean Food Studies and in contemporary postcolonial writing and cultures, especially Caribbean, Black British and women's writing. I also have interests in postcolonial pedagogies. My latest research centres on the interplay between food and culture in Caribbean and diasporic contexts, with particular interests in cookery writing and questions of 'authenticity', culinary versions of 'nation', oral history and culinary transmission and food hierarchies and social order in early accounts of and in the Caribbean.
I teach on all levels of the BA (Hons) English Literature and Joint Honours undergraduate programmes and on the MA in Contemporary Literature at York St John University. My specialist courses include Writing the Caribbean, Canonicity: Making and Breaking the Canon and Postcolonial Literature (M level).
I am also an experienced senior supervisor for PhD students at York St John University. I have supervised doctoral theses on Caribbean, Canadian, Indian and Sri Lankan writers, on Victorian writing, the poetry of Ted Hughes and on Foucaultian readings of business leadership literature. I currently supervise theses on Victorian Women's Writing, Friendship and the History of Emotions, genre and the writings of China Mieville and 'Corporeal Histories' in the work of recent African-American male writers.
I would particularly welcome postgraduate research student applications in the fields of Caribbean literature, Postcolonial writing and/or food studies.
My main research interests are in contemporary postcolonial writing and cultures, especially Caribbean, Black British and Women’s writing and postcolonial pedagogies, with a particular focus on the emergent area of Caribbean Food Studies.
My latest monograph, Food, Text and Culture in the Anglophone Caribbean, is published by Rowman and Littlefield in July 2019. Drawing on a rich and varied tradition of Caribbean writings, Food, Text and Culture shows how the creation of food and the creation of narrative are intimately linked cultural practices which can tell us much about each other. Historically, Caribbean writers have explored, defined and re-affirmed their different cultural, ethnic, caste, class and gender identities by writing about what, when and how they eat. Images of feeding, feasting, fasting and other food rituals and practices, as articulated in a range of Caribbean writings, constitute a powerful force of social cohesion and cultural continuity. Moreover, food is often central to the question of what it means to be Caribbean, especially in diasporic and globalized contexts.
This research is part of an ongoing cluster of publications and includes the 'Culinary Cultures; Food and the Postcolonial' Special issue of Journal of Postcolonial Writing which I guest edited in 2018, the QR funded 'Kitchen Talk’ oral history project working with Barbadian and British-West Indian women in the summer of 2018, my 2018 article on Mrs Yearwood's West Indian Recipes, the earliest extant Barbadian cookbook and a specially commissioned chapter 'Caribbean Cravings' for the Routledge Companion to Literature and Food (2018).
I have published widely on Caribbean and Black British writing with recent commissioned book chapters included in major reference texts published by Cambridge University Press. These include chapters on Black British Poetry (2015), Vernacular Voices: Language politics in Black and British Asian writing (2019) and on Black British writing (2020).
Recent publications
I am a founding member and co-editor of the leading international journal, Journal of Postcolonial Literature (Taylor and Francis). JPW was launched in 2005 and is devoted to the study of global literature in English. The journal explores the interface between the postcolonial writing of the modern global era and the economic forces of production which increasingly commodify culture, as well as the reshaping of inner maps of the metropolis through the ethnic, diasporic voices and the alternative and interstitial modes of writing associated with the new margins. JPW is published 6 times per year and is Thomson Reuter Arts and Humanities Citation indexed, the key stamp for journals in this area.
Editorial board membership
- World Literature Written in English
- Journal of Postcolonial Writing
- Journal of Contemporary Literature (India)
Specialist peer reviewer, journals
- Ariel: A Review of International English Literature (Canada)
- Journal of Caribbean Studies (Texas, USA)
- Wadabagei: A Journal of the Caribbean and its Global Diasporas (USA)
- Contemporary Women’s Writing (UK)
- Journal of Commonwealth Literature (UK)
- Journal of Multicultural Discourses (China/UK)
- Entertext (online journal)
- Middle Atlantic Review of Latin American Studies.
Publishing houses/other
- The Collegium of African American Research (CAAR) Forum for European Contributions to African American Studies (FORECAAST) series, Liverpool University Press
- Palgrave Macmillan (UK)
- Routledge (New York)
- Northcote House ‘Writers and Their Work’ series (UK)
- The Literary Encyclopedia (online resource)
- Rutgers (US)
- Brill (Netherlands)
Consultancy
- April 2019: Consultant for the article by Chante Joseph, Confronting the Colonial Past of Jamaica's Hard Dough Bread, Vice munchies
- 2012: Consultant for BBC TV Programme Who Do You Think You Are
- 2002 to 2004: Invited specialist consultant and member of International Editorial Advisory Board for Dean Baldwin and Patrick Quinn eds A Primer in Postcolonial Theory and An Anthology of Postcolonial Fiction, 2004. (Houghton M, USA)
International conference organisation
- 2018: Culinary Cultures: Continuing the Conversation (York St John University)
- 2017 (sole convenor): Northern Postcolonial Network biennial symposium: Culinary Cultures: Food and the Postcolonial (York St John University)
- 2014 (co-convenor): Annual Global Studies Association Conference: Cultural Encounters: Cosmopolitanism and Globalization (York St John University)
- 2007 (co-convenor): Roots and Routes: Rerouting the Postcolonial (University of Northampton)
- 2003 (co-convenor): Outside the Whale: Literature, Globalization and the Postcolonial (University of Northampton)
Professional accreditation
I am as Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA). I am also a UK Council for Graduate Education (UKGE) recognized supervisor and assessor for this national scheme.
External engagement
I am an invited member of the AHRC network 'Caribbean Coastal Resilience'.
I have acted as an External Examiner for PHDs at Newcastle, Leeds Beckett and Huddersfield Universities as well as for the Discipline of English at the Institute of Technology, Indore, India. I have also acted as an external examiner for undergraduate degrees in English at Leeds Beckett University and Solent University, Southampton.
