Postgraduate research students

‘A Nameless Love’: Queer Relations and Selfhood in Modern and Contemporary Scottish Literature

My PhD thesis explores works written by selected Scottish authors between 1922 and 2022 to examine both characterisations and literary forms of queer love, kinship, and selfhood by queer writers of fiction, poetry, and drama. The research examines narrative and stylistic strategies in queer writing that challenge heteronormative literary conventions, bolstering recent critical evaluations of queer Scottish texts. The thesis strengthens public awareness around queer histories in Scottish literature by depicting the historical struggle against legal and social authorities including discriminatory legislation, police brutality, and the Church’s influence on the public.

Journal articles

'Naomi Mitchison's Revision of "Pure" Science and Phallic Utopias in Solution Three', Foundation, 147, 53.1 (spring 2024)

Online Articles

'Shuggie Bain'. The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 13 November 2023.

Book Reviews

'The Old Haunts' by Allan Radcliffe, The Bottle Imp, Issue 34: Immortal Memory (June 2024)

The Dolphin by Susan Clegg – A Book Review (August 2023), Sheffield Magazine

Review of Yvette Taylor's Working-Class Queers: Time, Place and Politics (2023), PGRNS Blog

Research output contributions

Yvette Taylor and Workshop Participants. 2024. Queer Social Justice Pop-Up Zine, University of Strathclyde and The Royal Society of Edinburgh

• Professor Alan Riach
• Dr Corey Gibson

• The Eglinton Fellowship Scholarship. £3,300 2023/2024
• The Edwin Morgan Scholarship for Research in Scottish Literature. £5000, October 2023
• The Edwin Morgan Scholarship for Research in Scottish Literature. £5000, October 2022.
• Recipient of the Neil Munro Medal in Scottish Literature, 2021
• Recipient of the Alexander Scott Prize in Scottish Literature, 2021
• Recipient of the William Graham Prize in Scottish Literature, 2018

• Queer Form in Scottish Writing: A one-day symposium at the University of Glasgow (10 July 2024) to launch this Special Issue of Scottish Literary Review. Paper titled, '"Writing Beyond the Ending": Catherine Carswell's The Camomile (1922) as a Queer Epistolary Novel'.
• The fourth World Congress of Scottish Literatures hosted by the School of English at the University of Nottingham (3-7 July 2024): Paper titled, '"If you go for a quickie, get your money first!”: Queer flânerie, same-sex prostitution, and surveillance in
  John Henry Mackay’s The Hustler (1926)'.
• Fin de Sexe? A Symposium on Sexuality: A one-day symposium at the University of Edinburgh (27 June 2024) exploring how the concept of 'sex' was theorised at the turn of the 20th century. Paper titled, 'Queer Pederasty in John Henry Mackay’s Sagitta’s Books of the Nameless Love'.
• The Society for Italian Studies Biennial Conference 2024 at Royal Holloway University of London: Contribution to the panel titled 'The David Rizzio Project: David Rizzio across Arts and Media' (21 June 2024). 
• Homosexuality and Scottish Culture 1880-1945: This one-day symposium (18 June 2024) at the University of Stirling brings together researchers working on queer sexualities in Scotland across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Paper titled, ‘Unsettling Queer Orientations: De-idealising Modern Pederasty in John Henry Mackay's Sagitta's Books of the Nameless Love'.
• What is Scotland: Reinventions and Connections, CSCS PG Symposium: A two-day symposium at the University of Glasgow exploring issues at the forefront of Scottish studies (23-24 May 2024). Paper titled, ‘To be gay and to be Scottish, it would seem, are still mutually exclusive conditions’? Exploring the Formation of the Scottish Literary Canon and Queer Writing'.
• David Rizzio at the Scottish Court (Workshop 3): This third workshop, funded by a Royal Society of Edinburgh Workshop Award, was hosted at the Italian Cultural Institute, Edinburgh (13 October 2023). It investigates how David Rizzio (1533-1566), confidential secretary of Mary Queen of Scots, has been represented in literature, opera, painting and cinema. Paper titled, 'A Portrayal of David Rizzio's queerness in 21st century cinema'.
• When It Changed: Women in SF/F Since 1972: To mark the 50th anniversary of Joanna Russ’s landmark short story, ‘When It Changed’, the Science Fiction Foundation, and the Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic and Games and Gaming Lab at the University of Glasgow proposed an online conference on women’s role in reshaping science fiction (3-4 December 2022). Paper titled, '‘Naomi Mitchison's Revision of “Pure” Science and Phallic Utopias in Solution Three’.
• Rewriting Gender in an Age of Transition (1880-1940): An online conference hosted at the University of St Andrews (16-18 September 2022). Paper titled, 'Reclaiming Women’s Voices in the Poetry of Violet Jacob and Marion Angus'.

Graduate Teaching Assistant: Scottish Literature Level One 

• Scottish Literature 1A: The Fantastic and the Real
• Scottish Literature 1B: Stories We Tell Ourselves

Graduate Teaching Assistant: Italian

• Italian Culture (Level 1 and 2)
• Italian Language for International Mobility

• Researcher at the Alasdair Gray Archive and the Edwin Morgan Trust: I am tracing the interpersonal and artistic connections between Alasdair Gray and Edwin Morgan, exploring how they experienced and wrote about unconventional and queer love stories, and recording their enduring impression on Scottish society and the arts.
• Peter Nicholls Essay Prize 2024 Winner. Article titled, 'Naomi Mitchison's Revision of "Pure" Science and Phallic Utopias in Solution Three'
• Conference Co-Administrator and Panel Chair, 'Going Steady': Gender Research in Turbulent Times, Annual PGRNS Conference, 9 March 2023 at the University of Strathclyde.
• Conference Administrator - Intern (English Language & Linguistics), December 2022-September 2023.
• Committee Member, The Postgraduate Gender Research Network of Scotland, March 2022-present.
• President of the Scottish Literature Society, 2020-2021.