Postcolonial and Global Studies Research Group

The Postcolonial and Global Studies Research Group (PGSRG) at NTU builds on the work of our Postcolonial Studies Centre (established in 2000) and is a leading international hub for critical thought around the legacies of social disenfranchisement, global inequalities, colonialism, and neo-colonialism. Researchers address the potential for global, postcolonial and decolonial thought and practice to contest marginality and social exclusion. The PGSRG founded the Changing Wor(l)ds Partnership which works with publishers, writers’ agencies, activist groups, and literary and cultural organisations to create a platform for dissenting and disenfranchised voices. The underpinning research of all members contributes to the shape of this network, which actively seeks collaboration between scholars, cultural activists, and practitioners.

The Research Group aims to lead and support work on global justice and decolonisation, and is committed to engaging with diverse public audiences; its Changing Wor(l)ds Partnership, its Formations programme in collaboration with the Bonington Gallery, and literary events and festivals have been a forum for this in recent years. Activities have included writing events, workshops, conferences, film screenings and directors in conversation series, festivals, and events with artists. Guest speakers and workshop facilitators for events led by the research group have included the novelists Bernardine Evaristo (Booker Prize winner), Abdulrazak Gurnah, Kamila Shamsie, Sharankumar Limbale, Ajay Navaria, Urmila Pawar, Des Raj Kali, Cho. Dharman, Shamim Sarif, Okechukwu Nzelu, Pete Kalu; poets Kalyani Thakur Charal, Jacinta Kerketta, Jameela Nishat and Mudnakudu Chinnaswamy; filmmakers Destiny Ekaragha, Cass Pennant, Perivi Katjavivi, Jayan K. Cherian and Seral Murmu; and the artists Osheen Siva and Subash Thebe Limbu.

The PGSRG is led by the NTU English department and has staff members and doctoral candidates working across all NTU departments in the Arts and Humanities, as well as Arts and Design, and Architecture, Design and the Built Environment. Many of its postgraduate researcher members are supported by AHRC M4C (Midlands Four Cities) doctoral research funding, by NTU PhD Studentship bursaries, or by international funding. The Research Group runs interdisciplinary research and literary events, makes available online materials through its website and researchers’ project sites, and welcomes associate members including those outside academia seeking a research support network. The Research Group is defined by a community of scholars who work across a range of disciplinary and cultural contexts to extend the fields of Postcolonial and Global Studies.

Members of the Postcolonial and Global Studies Research Group supervise postgraduate students on topics including:

• Contemporary postcolonial and global literatures
• Interventions in postcolonial and decolonial theory and world literature
• The postcolonial literary marketplace
• Dalit Literature
• Refugee narratives and forced migration
• Literary activism
• Mental health
• African American and Black British print and visual culture
• The American South and the US Civil Rights movement
• Interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary postcolonial studies
• Indigenous literatures
• Adivasi literature
• Women's writing, film and art from the contemporary Middle East
• Travel writing
• Ecocriticism
• Globalization, technology, and contemporary literature and theory
• Gender and maternity in postcolonial and global contexts
• Representations of incarceration

Research Group members’ individual research projects have included work with the Nottingham Refugee Forum and with refugee women, with Dalit and Adivasi writers, and have addressed writers and communities worldwide, with recent work focusing on the UK, India, Palestine, Cuba, Nigeria, and the US.

In 2020, the Research Group launched the Formations series of public events with Bonington Gallery: Formations enables interdisciplinary public engagement and is concerned with making visible the centrality of Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic artists and thinkers, and the patterns and materials that connect global creative and intellectual histories. Many events are available to view on the dedicated Formations YouTube channel.

PGSRG members have worked with many local, national, and international partners, many through our Changing Wor(l)ds Programme, including:

• UNESCO Cities of Literature
• Nottingham Contemporary
• New Art Exchange
• Nottingham Refugee Week
• Palewell Press
• HopeRoad Publishing
• Exiled Writers Ink
• Spread the Word
• Primary Gallery
• Bonington Gallery
• Shaheen Women’s Resource & Welfare Association
• Tilted Axis
• Hyderabad Literary Festival

PGSRG members have been awarded research grants from the British Academy, Arts and Humanities Research Council, and the Leverhulme Trust.

Selected recent publications by centre members include:

Colin Alexander, ed., The Frontiers of Public Diplomacy: Hegemony, Morality and Power in the International Sphere(New York: Routledge, 2021)

Sophie Fuggle, France’s memorial landscape: views from Camp des Milles (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2023)

Anna Ball, Forced Migration in the Feminist Imagination

Transcultural Movements(Abingdon: Routledge, 2022). Available here as an Open Access book.

Martin O’Shaughnessy, Looking Beyond Neoliberalism: French and Francophone Belgian Cinema and the Crisis (Edinburgh University Press, 2022)

Sharon Monteith, SNCC’s Stories: The African American Freedom Movement in the Civil Rights South (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2020)

Jenni Ramone, Postcolonial Literatures in the Local Literary Marketplace: Located Reading (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)

Isabel Story, Soviet Influence on Cuban Culture, 1961–1987: When the Soviets Came to Stay (New York: Lexington, 2019)

Phil Leonard, Orbital Poetics: Literature, Theory, World (London: Bloomsbury 2019) Available here as an Open Access book.

Nicole Thiara, Judith Misrahi-Barak and K. Satyanarayana, eds. Dalit Text: Aesthetics and Politics Re-Imagined (New Delhi: Routledge, 2019)

Anna Ball and Karim Mattar, eds., The Edinburgh Companion to the Postcolonial Middle East (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019)

Colin Alexander, Administering Colonialism and War: The Political Life of Sir Andrew Clow of the Indian Civil Service (Oxford and New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2019)

The Formations Event Series with Bonington Gallery

Nicole Thiara, Writing, Analysing, Translating Dalit Literature

Nicole Thiara, On Page and on Stage: Celebrating Dalit and Adivasi Literatures and Performing Arts; Dalit Adivasi Text (wordpress.com)

Leverhulme Research Fellowship, Anna Ball: ‘Moving Women, Moving Stories: Rethinking Narratives of Forced Migration’

Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship held by Distinguished Professor Sharon Monteith on the literature of the US civil rights movement

Sharon Monteith, SNCC’s Stories: The African American Freedom Movement in the Civil Rights South (2020)

Jenni Ramone, Postcolonial Literatures in the Local Literary Marketplace: Located Reading

Jenni Ramone, www.TheBreastfreader.com

Sharon Monteith, Journey to Justice

Phil Leonard, British Academy/ Leverhulme-funded Troubling Globalization workshops

Sharon Monteith and Nahem Yousaf, British Academy Landmark Conference: Civil Rights Documentary Cinema and the 1960s: Transatlantic Conversations on History, Race and Rights.