About David
After growing up in West Cornwall, and attending my local schools there, I completed my undergraduate, Masters, and PhD study at the University of Oxford, where I was also the Mary Ewart Junior Research Fellow at Somerville College. Returning to ̽»¨ÊÓƵ in 2013 marked a return to my Westcountry roots.
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My work crosses creative and critical fields, and fiction and poetry. Recent research has focused on issues of the future, the Anthropocene, and utopian thought; at the moment I’m also exploring ideas connected to cognition, spirituality, creativity, and form (organic and otherwise). My second monograph, The Near Future in 21st Century Fiction: Climate, Retreat and Revolution was published by Cambridge University Press in 2023. My doctoral research, in contrast, focused on late nineteenth century literature and my first monograph,ÌýKipling’s Art of Fiction, was published by Oxford University Press in 2013. I have also co-edited books on Robert Burns and on Doris Lessing, and my essays have appeared in journals such asÌýNovel, Genre, Twentieth-Century LiteratureÌýandÌýVictorian Literature and Culture.
I am the author of two collections and a pamphlet of poetry, and my poems have appeared in numerous journals in the UK and Europe, including Poetry Review, PN Review, Poetry Wales, the Forward Book of the YearÌýandÌýPoetry Ireland. I enjoy creative collaboration: a set of songs for the composer Martin Suckling was performed at the Royal Opera House in 2014 and published by Faber; a poem, ‘A Language of Change,’Ìý was commissioned by Carol Ann Duffy for the Guardian and recorded by Tamsin Grieg before COP21 in Paris; another poem, ‘This is an Event,’ was commissioned as an installation for an exhibition of Carla Chan’s artwork at Galloire in UAE. My fiction is represented by Sara O’Keeffe at Andrew Nurnberg Associates.
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I’ve completed a number of public projects arising out of my research and since 2022 I have led the ‘Net-Zero Visions’ project in collaboration with Devon Climate Emergency and other partners, which supports individuals and communities in reimagining the places where they live, so as to catalyse change. I have also worked with the Art and Energy Collective on how creative practitioners and SMEs can use the utopian imagination to reimagine what they do and why, in the context of climate crisis. My Masters and Doctoral study was funded by the AHRC, and I’ve been PI on grants totalling over £250k.Ìý
At ̽»¨ÊÓƵ I’ve held a number of senior leadership roles, including Head of English and Creative Writing. I’m currently Associate Head of School for Research for the School of School of Society and Culture, and Research Co-ordinator for English and Creative Writing. I was also a member of the ERDF funded Low Carbon Devon project team; co-founder and co-coordinator of the Research Group ‘Environmental Cultures’; and a founding member and Steering Committee member of the UK Future Earth ECR and Practitioner Network (UKFE ECRP) for the UK national academies.Ìý
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I very much enjoy taking my research and thinking into the classroom, and have been teaching undergraduates since the first year of my PhD in Oxford. At ̽»¨ÊÓƵ I have devised and taught on a wide range of modules in both English and Creative Writing.
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Supervised Research Degrees
I've been part of supervisory teams on five completed PhDs, on subjects ranging from ekphrastic fiction, to graphic poetry, to social care and memoir. Current PhD supervisions include projects focused on ghosts and history in Nigeria; the fiction of eco-emergency; poetry and conceptions of health; caste and community in 18C Kerala and contemporary London; trends in recent detective fiction; and on science fiction, the classics, and post-humanism.
Contact David
Room 8, 5 Portland Villas, Drake Circus, ̽»¨ÊÓƵ, PL4 8AA
+44 1752 585104
david.sergeant@plymouth.ac.uk