Heritage & Creativity Institute selects Research Fellows
Friday, 24 March 2017
Dr Wendy O'Shea-Meddour
Dr Wendy O'Shea-Meddour spent several years teaching English Literature at Oxford University before becoming an English Lecturer at the University of Reading.
Her main areas of expertise include persuasive writing, creative writing, critical theory, and postcolonial theory, but she is also a highly successful and internationally published children’s writer. Since her debut was shortlisted for the 'Branford Boase Award for Outstanding First Novel' in 2012, she has gone on to publish twelve more award-winning children's books (with publishers including Bloomsbury, Frances Lincoln and Oxford University Press).
Wendy's HCI project will focus on 'Narratives of Fear (and the Other) in Contemporary Children's Literature'. An Action Lab will in 2017 will bring together a variety of academics and experts from the publishing world, all with overlapping interests and expertise.
Wendy will also be involved with public-facing activities, such as offering creative writing workshops to children.
Wendy is keen to make use of the University’s Special Collections, particularly the Ladybird collection, and will be spending some time in the archives.
The HCI Fellowship has already enabled her to begin fruitful discussions with children's literature experts at national organisations.
Dr Conor Carville
Dr Conor Carville is Associate Professor in the English Department, where he also convenes the Creative Writing pathway.
His book on Samuel Beckett and the Visual, the fruit of five years research in the Beckett Collection at Reading, is forthcoming this year from Cambridge University Press.
Conor has also published many essays on Samuel Beckett, most recently 'Murphy's Thanatopolitics', which draws in part on the manuscript of Beckett's novel Murphy, purchased by Reading University in 2013.
His first book, ‘The Ends of Ireland: Criticism, History, Subjectivity’, was published by Manchester University Press in 2012. In 2007 he won the Patrick Kavanagh award for poetry, and his collection of poems, Harm's Way was published by Dedalus Press in 2013.
Conor is currently working on Beckett's Afterlives, a book project that will bring together an examination of Beckett's intellectual development with ideas around life, health, ecology and the non-human world that have been the subject of furious debate in the humanities over the past ten years.
As HCI Fellow Conor will be exploring a cross theme project connecting elements of the ‘Health’ theme with the Beckett archives. Conor will be running an Action Lab bringing together academics from across the university, with a view to enabling projects connecting the sciences and social sciences with creative practice.