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Staff Profile

Professor Vybarr Cregan-Reid

Professor of Creative Non-Fiction, Associate Head of School for Creative Writing, Media and Film

I am a writer, academic, and sometimes broadcaster. Although I've published numerous academic articles and a monograph, I work broadly in the field of non-fiction.

My most recent book is 'Primate Change: How the World We Made is Remaking Us' (Hachette 2018) about how the way we live now is changing our bodies. It was translated into 8 languages, and led to making programmes with ITV and across the BBC, even editing live radio on 5Live, interviews across the US radio on NPR - recording an audiobook, a Ted talk, a Long Read for The Guardian, and many more. I also made, based on this book, 2 series for the BBC World Service (called ‘Changing World, Changing Bodies’), these were broadcast in about 200 countries. It was a Science Book of the Year in the ‘Financial Times’ and in ‘The Mail’.

Before that, I published ‘Footnotes: How Running Makes Us Human (Penguin Random House, 2016). It is a nature-writing memoir about running and the environment. It was translated into a couple of languages. Reviewers called it ‘impassioned and energetic’, and ‘a blazing achievement’.

I am currently working on a political memoir about education and the war on the humanities.

Further information

Teaching

I teach in Creative Writing at York St John, but have also taught English Literature across all levels to PhD. I've even taught trainee doctors at Medical Schools.

Publications and media

See the full list of my publications and media: