Madeline Clements

I am a Research Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in English Studies with a PhD in English, specialist research interests in postcolonial writing and South Asian Muslim (particularly Pakistani) fiction, a strong background in researching and publishing in this field internationally, and growing expertise in teaching literature in English at undergraduate and postgraduate level.

I obtained my BA from the University of Oxford, hold two MAs (one in Theatre, the other in International Literature in English) from the University of London, and completed my PhD at the University of East London. I also hold a PGCE in English and Drama and worked in London schools before entering higher education. Prior to joining Teesside University I was Assistant Professor in English at Forman Christian College, Lahore, Pakistan; I have also taught at the University of East London. At Teesside University, I am leading the module on Postcolonial Writing.

In the UK and Pakistan I have been successful in securing funding for research which is relevant to the Institute of Design, Culture and the Arts’ research themes (especially those relating to contemporary cultural and political configurations of diverse identities), and in publishing and disseminating related outputs. My PhD on Muslim (self-)representation in post-9/11 South Asian fiction in English, supervised by Peter Morey at the University of East London (UEL), was AHRC-funded. Writing Islam from a South Asian Muslim Perspective: Rushdie, Hamid, Aslam, Shamsie, a monograph based on this study, was published by Palgrave in the UK and the US with worldwide distribution in 2015 (see http://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9781137554376).

In early 2012, I travelled to Lahore following the award of a two-month Junior Residency based at the National College of Arts (NCA). There I researched a project on images of violence in contemporary Pakistani visual art and fiction in English which resulted in a well-reviewed art feature for Wasafiri, ‘Reframing “Violence”, Transforming Impressions: Images in Contemporary Pakistani Visual Art and English-Language Fiction’. The connections I made with artists and scholars in disciplines such as art history and anthropology facilitate and enrich my research as it shifts in new and more collaborative directions.

Unvanishing Angularities, my new research project, asks how debates about Pakistan's religious minorities within the postcolonial Islamic Republic have been replayed by writers, artists and critical thinkers in moments of crisis, locally and globally.

In 2014 I curated Second Glance, Double Take, an exhibition of paintings by contemporary Pakistani artists which toured from London’s School of Oriental and African Studies to TU’s Constantine Gallery, and continue to undertake new curation projects related to my wider research interests (including a forthcoming solo exhibition in Karachi by the sculptor Saud Baloch). I am looking forward to collaborating further both with the Constantine Gallery and with mima (Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art) in my new role as Research Lecturer at Teesside University.

My articles and essays have been published in literary journals and books such as Sohbet, Interventions, Wasafiri, and Imagining Muslims (Routledge). Since 2008 I have been a frequent reviewer for publications including the Times Literary Supplement and Dawn newspaper’s Books & Authors supplement, and have been a moderator and panelist at Oxford University Press Pakistan’s Karachi and Islamabad Literature Festivals. I have also spoken at conferences including the British Association of South Asian Studies’ annual conference; the Open University’s Citizenship, Narrative and Neo/Colonial Histories Conference; and Beyond Islamophobia, organised by the Muslims, Trust and Cultural Dialogue research project. Current articles-in-progress include ‘Countervailing Aesthetics?: Depictions of the British multicultural working class in post-7/7 art’, which builds on a presentation I made at the University’s British Culture After 9/11 conference in June 2014, and 'Un-vanishing Angularities: Pakistani Christians in the Post 9/11 Imaginary’.

A report on my recent visit to IIUI can be read here: http://www.iiu.edu.pk/index.php?page_id=19214

• Postcolonial Literature and Theory
• Postcolonial Culture and Globalisation
• Literature, Art and 9/11 and 7/7
• Representation of South Asian Muslims
• Pakistani Literature (in English)
• Literature, Art and Minorities in Pakistan