Rob Hawkes

Dr Rob Hawkes joined Teesside University in October 2012, having taught previously at the University of York (2005-2009), the University of East Anglia (2009-2010), and Leeds Trinity University (2010-2013). He completed his BA (Hons) in English Language and Literature at the University of Liverpool, his MA in Literature at the University of Hertfordshire, and his PhD in English at the University of York. His thesis examined the fiction of the British writer Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939) in relation to theories of character, plot, genre, and trust.

Rob is a Fellow of the English Association, Past Chair of the British Association for Modernist Studies (BAMS), and a member of the Executive Committee of the Ford Madox Ford Society.

In September 2012, he co-organised a major international conference on Ford’s First World War modernist masterpiece Parade’s End, which had recently been republished in a four-volume critical edition by Carcanet Press and been adapted for television by Sir Tom Stoppard. The conference programme included a Q&A session with Susanna White, the director of the adaptation, and Rupert Edwards, the producer/director of Who on Earth Was Ford Madox Ford? A Culture Show Special.

Rob has twice hosted the Northern Modernism Seminar at Teesside, in 2014 and 2022, and he was a member of the organising committee for the first English: Shared Futures conference in Newcastle in 2017. Rob also co-organised Hopeful Modernisms (BAMS 2022) and Ephemeral Modernisms (BAMS 2024).

In October 2023, Rob presented 'How can novels help us think about money... and maybe even save the planet?' in the 'One Fifteen at MIMA' series of informal public talks. A new version of this talk, which is now available via Money on the Left, was named 'Podcast of the Week' by The Syllabus in March 2024.

Rob’s research is founded on interests in modernism and postmodernism, literature, money, and trust.

He is the author of: Ford Madox Ford and the Misfit Moderns: Edwardian Fiction and the First World War (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); and co-editor of: Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End: The First World War, Culture, and Modernity (Rodopi, 2014); War and the Mind: Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End, Modernism, and Psychology (Edinburgh University Press, 2015); and An Introduction to Ford Madox Ford (Routledge, 2015).

Rob is currently working on a monograph examining literature, money, and trust from 1890 to 1990 from a neochartalist perspective. This work makes interdisciplinary connections between literature, economics, sociology, and politics, and examines texts by writers ranging from George Gissing, Oscar Wilde, Edith Wharton and Evelyn Waugh to Patricia Highsmith, Muriel Spark, Thomas Pynchon, B. S. Johnson, Harold Pinter, Angela Carter, and Jeannette Winterson.

Rob is a member of the Money on the Left editorial collective and co-editor of the open-access peer-reviewed journal Money on the Left: History, Theory, Practice. MotL is an interdisciplinary research and media collective that reclaims money’s public powers for imaginative intersectional politics. Please click here for links to Rob's MotL contributions: 'UK Universities in Crisis? Time to Transform Higher Ed Finance', with Scott Ferguson (Essay, Jan 2025); 'Money, Modernism & Inflation in The Great Gatsby (Part 2)' (Podcast, Nov 2024); 'Money, Modernism & Inflation in The Great Gatsby' (Podcast, Aug 2024); 'How can novels help us think about money... and maybe even save the planet?' (Podcast, Feb 2024); 'Modern Movie Theory: What We Do in the Shadows' (Podcast, Jan 2024); 'Criticism LTD w/ Matt Seybold' (Podcast, Jan 2024); 'Postmodern Money Theory!' (Podcast Series, March-May 2023); 'The Descent of Money' (Podcast, Dec 2022); 'Monetary Modernism' (Podcast, July 2022); 'On "Thin Air"' (Essay, Jan 2022), and 'Money, Literature & Trust with Rob Hawkes' (Podcast, March 2021).

Rob welcomes enquiries from prospective research students on topics such as modernism; the First World War; Ford Madox Ford and his literary networks; neochartalism and the public money paradigm; literature, money and trust.