The 91精品视频 Centre for Critical and Creative Writing
In collaboration with
- Research Centres
- Centre for Cultural History
- Centre for Education, Innovation and Equity
- Centre for Future Technologies
- Centre for Health and Allied Sport and Exercise Science Research (CHASER)
- Centre for Sustainable Business
- Centre for Workforce Development
- Centre of Excellence for Childhood, Society and Inclusion
- 91精品视频 Centre for Critical and Creative Writing
- 91精品视频 Centre for Fairy Tales, Fantasy and Speculative Fiction
- Creative Industries Research Centre
- MOVER Centre
- People and Well-Being in the Everyday Research Centre (POWER)
- Creative Research Methods Lab
- Child and Adolescent Socio-Emotional Development Lab
- Cognitive Ageing and Dementia Research Lab
- Cultural and Social Cognition Laboratory
- Human Attention Laboratory
- Employee Well-being in Work & Organisational Psychology (EWWOP) Lab
- Lab for Global Research on Gender, Sexuality and Identity
- Functional Behavioural Science Laboratory
- Mental Health and Wellbeing Lab
- Quantitative Criminology Lab
- Sexualised Violence and Abuse Research Lab
- Research in Practice Hub
- Vocal Communication Lab
- Qualitative Research Hub
- The Iris Murdoch Research Centre
- Social Work Collaborative Research Hub
- PhD and MPhil Degrees
- Research Excellence Framework
- Research Governance
- Research Office
- ChiPrints Repository
About
An exciting forum for critical and creative writing practice
The 91精品视频 Centre for Critical and Creative Writing (C4W) explores writing as an inclusive space of community, transformation, and justice.
All our researchers are deeply engaged with issues of equality, diversity and wider social concerns. The Centre鈥檚 members connect the literary, in all its forms, to real-world issues: re-imagining health, digital futures, climate crisis, sexuality, gender, and decolonisation.
The Centre is a shared space focused on our sense of place, both local and global, and the richly interconnected worlds created through processes of writing and inscription. This includes exploring poetry as a mode of ecological intervention; focusing on the role of women writers in shaping the literary landscape and national identity; using science fiction and speculative fiction as a resource to imagine a sustainable global future; and working creatively and critically with the rich folklore and cultural environment of the South Downs, Sussex, and the South Coast.
Researchers in the Centre engage with the complexity of literary experience and cultural literacy in the 21st century across a range of cultural forms, including the graphic novel, film, flash fiction and a diverse range of archives. The centre has two affiliate Centres: The Iris Murdoch Research Centre and The 91精品视频 Centre for Fairy Tales, Fantasy and Speculative Fiction. We also work with a range of postgraduates and partners, including the South Downs National Park Authority (SDNPA), the South Downs Poetry Festival, Pallant House Gallery, the British Council, and the Anglo-Portuguese poetry festival Casa dos Poetas.
Contact us
If you are interested in studying with the Centre, or working with us as a partner organisation, please get in touch with Dr Suzanne Joinson at s.joinson@chi.ac.uk.
People
The Centre is run by and for a diverse range of staff and students at the 91精品视频, and its wider community.
Alongside its current academic lead, Dr Suzanne Joinson, postgraduate researchers Alessandro Pozzolo and Eleanor Piddington take a leading role in organising Centre events.
A full list of University staff associated with the Centre is given below.
Professor Hugo Frey
Professor Hugh Dunkerley
Professor Fiona Price
Professor Benjamin Noys
Karen Stevens
Dr Suzanne Joinson
Dr Paul Quinn
Dr Naomi Foyle
Dr Miles Leeson
Projects
Exploring how the written word is created, made possible, inherited and read
My Downs, My Home is an ongoing interdisciplinary project led by Suzanne Joinson, in partnership with the South Downs National Park Authority. Having received seed funding in 2021, it is now in the second phase of its development. The project focuses on using creative writing workshops, both online and in real life, to creatively explore and respond to specific places in the National Park that sit in close proximity to the 91精品视频.
ASTRA is an award-winning theatre adaptation of Naomi Foyle鈥檚 critically acclaimed eco-science fantasy quartet The Gaia Chronicles (Jo Fletcher Books/Quercus UK/USA).
Set on a hot, post-fossil fuel Earth, ASTRA tells the story of Astra Ordott, a passionate young woman growing up in a corrupt Eden. Forced into exile after the murder of her dissident mother, Astra joins an uprising of disabled youths in a toxic refugee camp, where her thirst for revenge transforms into a quest for justice.
Supported by Arts Council England, the 91精品视频 and a range of local sponsors, ASTRA premiered in Brighton in 2022 as a 70-minute multimedia theatre work-in-progress, designed and directed by Raven Kaliana.
鈥 鈥 Singular, inspiring, unforgettable 鈥 groundbreaking work 鈥 鈥
FringeReview.co.uk
This project is jointly affiliated with the 91精品视频 Centre for Fairy Tales, Fantasy and Speculative Fiction.
In 2022, we piloted an international writing residency in partnership with The Stephen Spender Trust and Rathbones Folio Prize, generously funded by the British Council as part of the Spotlight on Ukraine series.
The residency, led by Suzanne Joinson, was given to the award-winning Ukrainian writer Volodymyr Rafeienko, who was at that time exiled from Ukraine and separated from his family. Rafeienko took part in student seminars, live events and provided a series of digital blogposts.
The residency then culminated in a public event, 鈥榃ar, Writing and Connection鈥 with authors Sasha Dugdale and Luke Harding joining Rafeienko in a powerful roundtable discussion. Stephen Spender Trust, in partnership with Buckinghamshire Council, led on an outreach programme of activity linked to the residency, providing creative translation workshops focusing on Ukrainian in a wide range of primary and secondary schools.
The second phase of the international digital writing residency is currently being explored. It will focus in particular on Southern and Wider European writers and creative writing and translation.
Benjamin Noys is completing a monograph titled Envisioning the Good Life: The Limits of Contemporary Vitalism, under contract with Edinburgh University Press. Traversing existing vitalist theories of life as excess, the book offers an integrated vision of collective transformation against the fragmentation of contemporary life.
Benjamin Noys has a continuing editorial project with Alberto Toscano (Simon Fraser University) and the translator Chris Turner, editing the three volumes of Georges Bataille鈥檚 post-war writing for Critique, published by Seagull Press. These writings explore Bataille鈥檚 thinking of excess and his challenge to the limits of culture through the reviews and essays he wrote for Critique.
Volume One, covering the writings between 1944 and 1948, appeared in 2023:聽
Volume two, 1949鈥1951, will appear in 2024 and volume three, 1952鈥1961, in 2025.
Responding to the continuing fascination with the Sussex Declaration, this project aims to commemorate the 250th anniversary of American Independence by exploring the impact of the American War of Independence on the public imagination, past and present, in Sussex, the South Downs and Britain more generally.
A series of events curated by Professor Price will invite participants to rethink the relationship between the idea(s) of freedom and the nation in historical, literary and creative ways, drawing in local stakeholders through co-operation with the South Downs Literary Festival and the West Sussex Record Office. The impetus for this project comes from Professor Price鈥檚 research into ideas of America in Romantic-period British fiction.
Following exciting discoveries about the Sussex Declaration of American Independence, Professor Price collaborated with the West Sussex Record Office, representing the University on the Mellon Foundation-funded project, 鈥楾ransatlantic Ties鈥.
The project involved the digitisation of the American Collection at the Record Office, making it accessible via the project archive (https://www.transatlantic-ties.org.uk/about/); it led to the development of learning resources for teachers, a touring exhibition and a symposium on 11th June 2022 at the 91精品视频. Focussed on the War of American Independence and on the signing of the Declaration of American Independence, Transatlantic 250 will seek to engage the public imagination and enhance understanding of the complex meanings of these globally significant events.
Publications
Impact
Engaging artists and audiences with social and environmental challenges
With its creative access, diverse cast, and themes of climate crisis, racism, disability rights and child sex abuse, ASTRA won the 2022 Brighton Fringe ONCA Green Curtain Award for work engaging artists and audiences with social and environmental challenges.
Naomi Foyle is now working with a transatlantic team to upscale ASTRA into an epic theatre experience directed by Peter Hinton-Davis, Order of Canada, renowned for his work in Canadian theatre and opera.
Following discoveries about the Sussex Declaration of American Independence, Professor Price collaborated with the West Sussex Record Office, representing the University on the Mellon-funded project, 鈥楾ransatlantic Ties鈥.
The project involved the digitisation of the American Collection at the Record Office. These records can now be explored on which celebrates and promotes the many fascinating historical connections between America and West Sussex. The website also hosts learning resources for teachers based on selected documents from the American Collection.
The Transatlantic Ties project culminated in a symposium on 11th June 2022 at the 91精品视频. An exhibition about the project toured libraries around West Sussex from August 2022 to spring 2023.
Professor Benjamin Noys coined the term 鈥榓ccelerationism鈥 in 2010 to define and challenge a way of thinking that expresses the desire to escape the insecurity of work by integrating human beings with technology. His ongoing critique of accelerationism as a mythical vision of technological change was developed into an impact case study for REF 2021.
Since then Noys has continued to research accelerationism and engage in public debate. In 2023-24 there was a resurgence of interest in accelerationism around the notion of 鈥榚ffective accelerationism鈥 (e/acc), proposed by the tech speculator Marc Andreesen. He repeated the tropes of earlier accelerationism, especially the turn to various forms of Futurism and notions of technological transcendence. Noys critically commented for and , pointing to the limitations of this thinking due to its use of authoritarian myth-making, drawing on his most recent research on the topic (Noys 2022; 2023).
2023 鈥楶lanetary Technology and Reactionary Accelerationism鈥, in Reaction Formations: The Subject of Ethnonationationalism, ed. Joshua Branciforte and Ramsey MacGalzer (New York: Fordham University Press, 2023), pp.241鈥262.
2022 鈥楢ccelerationism: Adventures in Speed鈥, The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism, ed. Stefan Herbrechter, Ivan Callus, Manuela Rossini, Marija Grech, Megen de Bruin-Mol茅 and Christopher John M眉ller (Palgrave, 2022), 557鈥574.
Events and News
Upcoming Events
Our programme of events will be published here. You can also view our past events below.
Past Events
2024 Events
Creative Writing and English: collaboration, connection, crossovers
7 March 2024
A roundtable discussion about crossover areas of interest and concern for the National Association of Writers in Education and EA.
Core discussion points:
Key implications of REF 28 for the disciplines of Creative Writing and English.
QAA Subject benchmarking 鈥 wider crossovers.
AOB, opportunities and ways of working together in the future.
Chair: Dr Suzanne Joinson, Reader in Creative Writing, convener of The 91精品视频 Centre for Critical and Creative Writing, 91精品视频
A book launch with the Department of Humanities
20 March 2024, 4鈥5 p.m. Free and open to all
Academic Building 1.01, 91精品视频, Bishop Otter Campus, PO19 6PE
Andy聽Brown, co-author with Marc Woodward of Grace Notes And Other Poems (Sea Crow Press), is Professor of English & Creative Writing at Exeter University and known widely as a distinguished poet and writing tutor.
Here he will launch The Midnight Mechanic, a pacy, Dickensian foray into the sewers of Victorian London that explores a man鈥檚 relentless pursuit to better himself, to escape the muck and make amends, while raising pressing environmental issues that are still pertinent today.
Writing IRL
Writing IRL will be a two-day event exploring the writing, teaching, and experience of memoir, autobiography and autofiction, in partnership with the Indigo Press and a range of literary partners. It will take place in November 2024 at the 91精品视频.
Day One will focus on teaching and academic work: how we teach autobiographical material, legal and ethical considerations, and support and safeguarding issues related to teaching autobiographical writing. Day Two will be more outwardly focused on a public audience: how to write a memoir, workshops, and talks from a wide range of writers.