Postgraduate Student Member
Christopher Owen finished his PhD English Literature at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, under the supervision of Professors Farah Mendlesohn and Eugene Giddens. His doctoral research investigated the representation of intersectional systemic oppression in contemporary children’s fantastika literature. His work argued a method for identifying both the presence of systemic oppression in any fictional world, as well as how that oppression shapes a text’s meaning through different rhetorical and narratological strategies in ways that can cut across ostensible narratives of social justice.
Christopher has lectured at both the undergraduate and graduate level, presented at over a dozen international conferences and symposiums, and has published several articles on topics such as cognitive theory, intersectionality, feminist revisionist writing, queer resistance, and children’s fantastika literature. He is currently working with Dr. Amy Crawford, co-editing a special collection on E.T.A. Hoffmann for Marvels and Tales. He was an editorial assistant for The Year’s Best Weird Fiction, edited by Helen Marshall (2017), and he has worked as the children’s book reviewer for The British Science Fiction Association. He has worked as an associate lecturer for Anglia Ruskin University’s Master of Arts in Children’s Literature Programme, and as an LGBT+ youth worker for Salford City Council’s Integrated Youth Support Services. As a youth worker, Christopher not only ran two to three LGBT+ youth groups each week, but he also wrote and delivered LGBT+ inclusivity training to professionals, and visited schools for both small classroom and large assembly talks.
Christopher’s future work will explore issues related to social justice, normativity and accessibility in children’s literature. For more information about his previous publications, please visit https://anglia.academia.edu/ChristopherOwen