Dr David Shackleton

(he/him)

Publication

• Date
• Type

Research

Research Interests:

• modern and contemporary literature and the environment
• modernist literature and culture
• speculative fiction, including science fiction, climate fiction, and speculative futurisms
• world literature and planetary fiction
• environmental politics and activism

Research Projects:

My first book is British Modernism and the Anthropocene: Experiments with Time (Oxford University Press, 2023). This book assesses the environmental politics of modernism in relation to the idea of the Anthropocene—a proposed geological epoch in which humans have fundamentally changed the Earth system. It explores how British modernists such as H. G. Wells, D. H. Lawrence, Olive Moore, Virginia Woolf, and Jean Rhys employed types of narrative breakdown—including fragmentation and faltering passages devoid of events—to expose the limitations of human schemes of meaning, negotiate the relationship between different scales and types of time, produce knowledge of ecological risk, and register various forms of nonhuman agency. This project grew out of my AHRC-funded doctoral thesis, and has already issued in peer-reviewed articles in Modernism/modernity, Modernism/modernity Print Plus,Victorian Literature and Culture, and The Review of English Studies.

Turning to more recent speculative fiction, my second research project is called ‘Visions of the Future: Afrofuturism and the Environment’. It explores how Africanfuturism and Afrofuturism—expanding African and Afrodiasporic cultural movements spanning literature, film, photography, and music—promise to inspire new forms of environmental politics and activism. Analysing novels by Octavia E. Butler and Nnedi Okorafor, films by Wanuri Kahiu and Ryan Coogler, and music by Sun Ra and Janelle Monáe, I argue that Afro- and Africanfuturism provides counter-visions of the future that are urgently needed to combat climate capitalism, and the way in which it continues to foreclose the futures of many Black lives.

With Prof. Nedine Moonsamy (University of Johannesburg), I am guest-editing a special issue of Modern Fiction Studies called 'Planetary Fiction: African Literature and Climate Change'. The call for papers is available here.

Research Grants and Funding:

2024     Taith Research Mobility Funding, University of Johannesburg and University of Cape Town, 'Planetary Fiction: African Literature and Climate Change' 

2022     Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship, The Huntington (2 months), '"Failing Economies and Tortured Ecologies": Octavia E. Butler’s Climate-Changed Worlds'

2022     British Academy (Co-I), ‘Voices, Spaces, and Scales of Environmental Governance in the South West of Britain’

2021     GW4 Generator Fund Award (PI), ‘Rhetoric and Practices of Green Recovery in Cities’

2021     GW4 Crucible Seed Fund Award (Co-I), 'Stories of Hope: Eco-Emotions in Transitions to Net Zero'

2020     GW4 ECR Symposium Scheme Award (PI), ‘Climate Change: Science and Society’

2020     Colby Summer Institute Travel Grant, to attend the Colby Summer Institute in Environmental Humanities, Waterville, Maine

2019     University of Basel, Department of Languages and Literatures, honorarium to deliver a guest lecture

2018     British Society for Literature and Science (BSLS) Small Grant, to present research at the Radclyffe Hall Symposium, Birkbeck, University of London

2014     T. S. Eliot Summer School Bursary

2010–12     AHRC Studentship Award (full doctoral funding), University of Oxford

2010–12     College Scholarship (Arts), St Catherine’s College, University of Oxford

2010–12     Mary Blaschko Scholarship, Linacre College [declined]

Teaching

In the 2024–25 academic year, I am teaching the following module:

• Visions of the Future: Climate Change and Fiction (Year 3)

Literary critics are increasingly asking how literature engages—or fails to engage—with the current environmental crisis. This module will explore how writers and filmmakers since the 1960s have imagined climate-changed worlds, often by using genres of speculative fiction such as dystopian fiction, Afrofuturism, and cli-fi (climate fiction). Covering novels by writers such as Octavia E. Butler and Margaret Atwood and films such as Black Panther, we will consider which genres are best at portraying climate change and associated phenomena such as extreme weather events, drought, flooding, biodiversity loss, and species extinctions. We will use a range of recent ecocritical approaches to help us analyse the various novels and films, and will investigate the relationship between fiction and environmental activist movements, such as Extinction Rebellion and the Green Belt Movement. Throughout, we will be asking some big political questions. How is climate change related to issues of gender, race, and global inequality? How might fiction help us to understand the threat of climate change? And how might it help us to cultivate new forms of environmental care, and new forms of activism?

In the 2025–26 academic year, I will also teach the following module on the MA in Literature and the Environment:

• Planetary Fiction: World Literature and the Environment (MA)

What is planetary fiction? How can literature register transformations to the Earth System, which comprises the lithosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, biosphere, and atmosphere? And how might reading literature from different parts of the world change the way we understand the current environmental crisis? This module introduces recent debates about world literature, combined and uneven development, and the Anthropocene. Considering a range of prose genres including realism, historical fiction, fantasy, and science fiction, and recognizing the increasing globalization of the literary and media marketplace, it addresses fiction from the Caribbean (Jamaica Kincaid), Africa (Imbolo Mbue and Namwali Serpell), the United States (Jennifer Haigh and N. K. Jemisin), the Middle East (Nawal El Saadawi), China (Chen Qiufan), and the Arctic (Máret Ánne Sara). In the context of escalating climate and biodiversity crises, we will explore how and why we might read for the planet.  

Previously, I have taught:

• Spectral Femininities (MA), with Dr Becky Munford
• Representing Race in Contemporary America (Year 3), with Dr Alix Beeston
• Modern Drama: Page, Stage, Screen (Year 3)
• Scandal and Outrage: Controversial Literature of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries (Year 2)
• Drama: Page and Stage (Year 1)

I am accredited as a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA). 

Biography

I joined Cardiff University as a Lecturer in English Literature in 2018, having previously taught at the University of Exeter and the University of Oxford.

Professional Appointments:

• Senior Lecturer in English Literature (Teaching and Research). School of English, Communication and Philosophy, Cardiff University. 2022–present.
• Lecturer in English Literature (Teaching and Research). School of English, Communication and Philosophy, Cardiff University. 2021–2022.
• Lecturer in English Literature (Teaching and Scholarship). School of English, Communication and Philosophy, Cardiff University. 2018–2021.
• Lecturer in English (Education and Scholarship). Department in English, University of Exeter. 2017–2018.
• Part-Time Tutor (Dissertation Supervisor). University College, University of Oxford. 2016–2017.
• Part-Time Tutor (Dissertation Supervisor and Admissions Interviewer). St Catherine’s College, University of Oxford. 2010–2017.
• Part-Time Tutor (Course Designer and Leader). Oxford Programme for Undergraduate Studies, University of Oxford. 2010–2014.

Education:

• D.Phil. in English Literature, University of Oxford, 2015.
• M.A. in English Literature (Distinction), University College London, 2009.
• B.A. in Philosophy (First Class), University of Cambridge, 2007.

Invited Lectures and Presentations:

• 'Wells and the Anthropocene'. Keynote address at the H. G. Wells Society conference: 'H. G. Wells and the Anthropocene: Time, Earth, and Us', Art Workers' Guild, London, 21 September 2024.
• ‘Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred, Speculative Time, and Afrofuturism’, Cardiff BookTalk, Cardiff University, 3 March 2021.
• ‘Olive Moore, Queer Ecology, and Anthropocene Modernism’, University of Copenhagen, 29 April 2020 [Cancelled due to Covid-19].
• ‘H. G. Wells and the Ghostly Effects of Time Travel’, University of Copenhagen, 28 April 2020 [Cancelled due to Covid-19].
• ‘H. G. Wells’s Utopias, Ecological Risk, and the Anthropocene’, Modern and Contemporary Literature, Culture and Theory Research Seminar, Cardiff University, 22 April 2020 [Cancelled due to Covid-19].
• ‘H. G. Wells’s Early Scientific Romances and Victorian Periodical Culture’, University of Basel, 30 April 2019.
• ‘Radclyffe Hall, Olive Moore, and Queer Ecology’, ‘90 Years Since The Well of Loneliness: A Radclyffe Hall Symposium’, Birkbeck, University of London, 27 July 2018.

Conference Papers (Selected):

• 'African Climate Futures: Speculative Fiction and Environmental Activism', African Literature Association Conference 2025, University of Nairobi, 27 June 2025.
• 'African Climate Futures: Co-Creating Future Climate Scenarios for Engaging Policymakers in the Horn of Africa Drylands', African Studies Association of the UK Conference 2024, Oxford Brookes University, 30 August 2024.
• ‘African Cli-Fi: Writing the Climate Crisis from the South’, Writing from the South Workshop, Stellenbosch University, 19 July 2024.
• 'Imagining Global Energy Transitions: Lessons from Africanfuturism', Science Fiction Research Association 2024 conference, Tartu, 9 May 2024.
• 'A "fault line of pain": N. K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth Trilogy and Black Planetary Consciousness', ‘The Aesthetics of Geopower: Imagining Planetary Histories and Hegemonies’ conference, University of Amsterdam, 4 April 2024.
• 'Inspiring Transitions: Afrofuturist Counter-Moods and Environmental Activism', ASLE-UKI 2023 Conference, University of Liverpool, 30 August 2023.
• 'Climate Fiction: Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140, Green Finance, and Systemic Risk', ASLE 2023 Conference, Portland, Oregon, 10 July 2023.
• 'Planetary Fiction: Imbolo Mbue’s How Beautiful We Were, Oil, and Environmental Activism’, 'Making and Unmaking Africa: Global Developments and Environmental Humanities' conference, Osun State University, Osogbo, 27 June 2023.
• 'Solar Fiction: Nnedi Okorafor’s Noor, Renewable Energy, and Neo-Colonialism in Nigeria', 7^th Annual Lagos Studies Association Conference, 'Rethinking Decoloniality', University of Lagos, 23 June 2023.
• '"Failing Economies and Tortured Ecologies": Octavia E. Butler's Climate-Changed Worlds', ASLE-UKI Conference, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, 7 September 2022.
• ‘Africanfuturism: Wanuri Kahui’s and Nnedi Okorafor’s Counter-Visions of Development’, ASLE 2021 Virtual Conference, 2 August 2021.
• ‘Olive Moore, Queer Ecology, and Anthropocene Modernism’, MLA International Symposium, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Lisbon, 25 July 2019.
• ‘“Temps Perdi”: Jean Rhys’s Voyage in the Dark, Plantation Time, and Anthropocene Modernism’, ‘Nature and Narrative: Writing and Literature in the Anthropocene’ International Conference, Saint Louis University, Madrid, 22 June 2018.
• ‘D. H. Lawrence, Time Ecology, and Anthropocene Modernism’, Historical Modernisms Symposium, Institute of English Studies, University of London, 12 December 2016.

Conference and Workshop Organization:

• 'Planetary Fiction: African Literature and Climate Change', Workshop at the University of Johannesburg, 12 July 2024 (workshop co-organizer).
• ‘Imagining Environmental Futures’, Panel at ASLE 2021 Virtual Conference, 2 August 2021 (panel chair and speaker)
• ‘Climate Change: Science and Society’, GW4 Early Career Symposium, Cardiff University, 3-4 December 2020 (symposium co-organizer).
• ‘First Catz Conference: History and English’, St Catherine’s College, Oxford, 4 February 2013 (conference co-organizer).

Reviewing:

Peer reviewer of articles for PMLA; Modern Fiction Studies; Modernism/modernity; Feminist Modernist Studies; Woolf Studies Annual; Women's Writing; Tydskrif vir Letterkunde; Clio: A Journal of Literature, History, and the Philosophy of History; Futures; and Pulse: The Journal of Science and Culture.

Peer reviewer of books for Liverpool University Press.

Professional Memberships:

• African Literature Association
• African Studies Association of the UK
• Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (UK and Ireland)
• Science Fiction Research Association
• British Association for Modernist Studies
• Modernist Network Cymru
• H. G. Wells Society
• Modern Language Association
• National Council of Teachers of English

Supervisions

I welcome applications or informal queries from potential PhD students whose research interests overlap with my own:

• modern and contemporary literature and the environment
• modernist literature and culture
• speculative fiction, including science fiction, climate fiction, and speculative futurisms
• world literature and planetary fiction
• environmental politics and activism

I would also be interested in supervising the critical component of creative writing projects that have environmental themes.

I am currently supervising the following PhD dissertations:

Current supervision

Hind Mulfi