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Staff profile

Overview

Katie Tobin

Research Postgraduate

Affiliations
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Research Postgraduate in the Department of English Studies

Biography

I'm a PhD candidate in the Department of English Studies. My PhD research examines modern and contemporary narratives about reproductive justice, with a particular focus on speculative fiction.

Set against the backdrop of ecological crises, rising religious and political extremism, and the erosion of rights for women, queer, and trans people, I explore fiction's potential to reimagine futurity beyond heteronormative modes of reproduction. Focusing on works by Louise Erdrich, Kazuo Ishiguro, Ben Lerner, Marge Piercy, Joanne Ramos, and Emily St. John Mandel, my research also investigates calls for expanded care and kinship networks that move beyond the confines of the privatised nuclear family.

I currently teach on the Creative Arts and Humanties BASc degree at University College London. I’ve also taught English, Philosophy and Creative Writing at Durham, Bournemouth University and the University of Winchester.

Alongside academia, I work in more public contexts, often in collaboration with the visual arts. I've written for AnOther, Elephant, the Financial Times, MUBI Notebook, Verso, and many more. You can find more of my work here. In 2024, I was shortlisted for the Felicity Bryan Associates New Voices Programme and longlisted for The Observer/Anthony Burgess Prize for Arts Journalism. Between 2023-2024 I worked at The London Magazine. 

Conference Papers
  • 'The utopian glimmer of fiction': Ecology, Relationality, and Reproductive Futurism in Ben Lerner's 10:04, Reproductive and Speculative Cultures Conference, Lancaster University, 2024
  • Cyborg vs. Goddess Gestational Narratives, British Association of American Studies Conference (online), 2024
  • ‘Thank you for the nurture’: Queer Solidarities, ARTs, and Kin-making in Contemporary Fiction, Outsider/s Conference, University of Sussex, 2023
  • Future Kinships: A Family Beyond Biology in Orphan Black, Ustinov Conference, University of Durham, 2022
  • Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?: Gestational Pedagogy in Orphan Black, Reproductive Futures Conference: Emergent Injustices, Hopes and Paradoxes, Tampere University, 2022
  • Parabolic Pedagogy in Paradise Lost and The Children of Men, Oxford English Graduate Conference, University of Oxford, 2022
  • The Sterility Apocalypse in Contemporary Dystopian Literature, British Association of American Studies Conference, University of Hull, 2022
  • The Means of (Re)production: Surrogacy in Contemporary Dystopian Fiction, Late Summer Lecture Series, University of Durham (online), 2022
  • Language and Deviant Sexuality in As I Lay Dying and The Member of The Wedding, Faulkner Studies in the UK Colloquium, Royal Holloway, University of London (online), 2021
Selected Writing
Roles
  • 2024: Research Assistant for Archiving Lesbian Photography Project, Department for English Studies, University of Durham and Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art
  • 2023 – 2024: Online Editor, The London Magazine
  • 2023: Research Assistant for Samuel Delany and Joanna Russ’s Selected Correspondence Project, (The Feminist Press), Department of English Studies, University of Durham

  • 2022: Research Assistant for Professor Matthew Eddy, Department of Philosophy, University of Durham
  • 2022: Research Assistant for the Literature in the World: Media, Broadcasting, and Communications Project, Durham Centre for Academic Development and Department of English Studies, University of Durham
  • 2022: Research Assistant for the Mapping the Covert Networks of Modern Culture Project, Department of English Studies, University of Durham
  • 
2022: Doctoral Research Delegate, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
  • 2021: Late Summer Lecture Series Convenor, University of Durham

  • 2020 – 2021: Student Representative for MA English Literary Studies, University of Durham

  • 2018 – 2019: Student Representative for BA English, University of Sussex
  • 2018: Junior Research Associate, Centre for Sexual Dissidence, University of Sussex

Research interests

  • Dystopian literature
  • Ecocriticsm
  • Feminist theory
  • Film and philosophy
  • Late twentieth and twenty-first century fiction
  • Medical humanities
  • Queer theory