English and Creative Writing
English and Creative Writing at UNSW is driven by a passionate group of writers and researchers working in a wide range of critical and creative fields. In English we research across the traditions of global literary history, both in English and in other languages, with a particular focus on the modern period, while Creative Writing at UNSW includes award-winning fiction writers and poets. Consistently ranked as one of the leading departments in Australia, our program is home to the Literary Provocations Hub, to Southerly (Australia’s oldest literary journal), and Open Humanities Press, one of the leading international open-access publishers. Our researchers also host and edit Affirmations: of the modern, the journal of the Australasian Modernist Studies Network.
Our areas of specialisation range widely, from Australian literature and modernist studies, through literary history and critical and narrative theory, to world literatures and creative writing:
- Our research addresses the global dimensions of Australian writing, including diasporic and expatriate writing, writing by refugees and asylum seekers, and the work of Indigenous writers, alongside continuing engagement with Australian settler writing.
- Our research spans a wide variety of topics within the broad field of modernist studies, including modernist poetics, the modernist novel, modernist periodical studies, and modernism and media. Our research addresses the formal experiments and political meanings of modernism’s responses to and critiques of global modernity.
- Our literary-historical research fosters interdisciplinary dialogues between literature and visual culture, literature and sound, and literature and the history of political struggle. Literary biography is another vital aspect of this research strength.
- Our strengths in literary and narrative theory range from innovative engagements with Lacanian psychoanalysis and continental philosophy to critical extensions of narratology. Our research seeks to show how theory matters today.
- Our research in world literatures spans the fields of postcolonial, diasporic and transnational literary studies. Our engagement with Australia’s settler-colonial history informs the ways we work to shape the dynamic fields of postcolonial and transnational writing. We focus on works in English, in translation, and in other languages.
- Our creative writers are deeply engaged in the literary community in Australia and across the world. They write award-winning novels, short fiction, poetry and nonfiction and are committed to public and cultural engagement. They have longstanding relationships with the State Library of NSW; Writing NSW, the Sydney Writers’ Festival; Diversity Arts Australia, the Adelaide Writers’ Festival; Centre For Stories (Perth); Asialink; the Historical Novel Society of Australasia; New South Press; and Varuna, The Writers’ House.
Higher Degree Research
Postgraduate research candidates in English literary studies undertake original research that answers difficult and timely questions about national identity, place, culture, narrative and aesthetic achievement. We offer supervision in English in the Doctor of Philosophy and Masters by Research (MRes).
You'll benefit from interdisciplinary approaches to postgraduate study that links literary studies with film, music, the visual arts, cultural studies, theatre, history, politics, philosophy, creative writing and linguistics.
The school’s postgraduate research cohort is one of the largest and most vibrant at UNSW. Our dynamic and diverse graduate students research across a wide range of topics, contribute to the faculty’s annual postgraduate conference, publish in reputable journals, conduct archival research internationally, and regularly present at national and international conferences.
Read more about our postgraduate students’ current projects, activities, and achievements on the Literary Provocations Hub. The Hub offers a dynamic program of seminars, workshops, HDR organised symposia and panels, masterclasses and conferences. You can also listen to podcasts featuring English and Creative Writing alumnus Georgia Rose Phillips and Marcus Zusak.
