Dr Claire Allen

Claire Allen is currently a Senior Lecturer in English. Dr Allen plays a full teaching and research role with experience at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. She currently designs and delivers core modules at levels four, five, six, and seven as well as being a dissertation supervisor. Dr Allen earned her PhD in contemporary London literature at the University of Northampton in 2011. Dr Allen has previously worked at Birmingham City University as an associate lecturer specialising in both Modern British Fiction and Children’s Literature as well as at the Centre for Academic Practice at the University of Northampton. She is also a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Dr Allen has peer-reviewed research published by leading academic journals and publishers in her field, including an article in Literary London and chapters in edited collections published by Palgrave Macmillan, including on the work of Will Self, Kurt Vonnegut, and Alasdair Gray. She is currently in the process of expanding and developing her research portfolio by working towards the publication of a monograph based on contemporary British fiction which considers new theoretical perspectives by which to approach London literature through an investigation of postmodernism, the post postmodern, feminist and postcolonial readings of literature at and around the turn of the twenty-first century.

Dr Allen is interested in supervising doctoral studies in the following areas, literature of the city, postmodernism (and beyond), contemporary British fiction, gender studies, contemporary performance poetry, postcolonial literature, and representations of working-class identities in literature.

Zoe Pape; English and Creative Writing

The Representation of the Female in Contemporary Dystopian Fiction written by Women.

Dr Allen’s current research and teaching experience lie within the areas of Eighteenth, Nineteenth, Twentieth and Twenty-first century literature, Children’s Fiction, Gender Studies, and Postcolonial and Diaspora Studies, Literature of the City, Literary and Cultural theory, as well as academic writing and research skills.