Emma Parker

My research asks how the legacies of the British Empire impact on modern and contemporary literature. I have a particular interest in autobiographical writing, settler cultures, and South African literature. My first book,<em><a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/life-writing-and-the-end-of-empire-9781350353794/" rel="nofollow">Life Writing and the End of Empire</a> </em>(Bloomsbury, 2024) draws together a previously unrecognised cohort of white authors who were raised in former British colonies, travelled to Britain after 1945, and later rewrote their colonial childhoods across multiple memoirs. Penelope Lively, J.G. Ballard, Doris Lessing, Janet Frame might seem unlikely subjects for a comparative study, but all of their autobiographical writings attempt to 'go home' to the Empire long after formal decolonisation. This 'wonderful book' was <a href="https://bacls.org/news/187/" rel="nofollow">awarded the BACLS 2025 Monograph Prize</a> for its 'very significant contribution to knowledge' and <a href="https://www.litencyc.com/book-prizes/book_prizes_2025.php" rel="nofollow">won the 2025 Literary Encyclopedia Book Prize </a>as 'a timely reminder of the continuing vitality of literary scholarship'. I have also previously worked with imperial historians Liam Liburd and Josh Doble on a co-edited, interdisciplinary essay collection <a href="https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526159748/" rel="nofollow"><em>British Culture After Empire</em></a>(MUP 2023).Reviews for this ‘genuinely impressive’ collection have surmised that these essays ‘should go straight’ onto British university syllabi. Throughout 2024 I collaborated with colleagues in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand to mark the NZ writer Janet Frame's centenary. Our edition of <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/30333962251366646" rel="nofollow">Janet Frame at 100</a> for <em><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/jclb/60/3" rel="nofollow">Literature, Critique, and Empire Today</a></em>is the first full special issue of new articles on Frame in the twenty-first century. As one of the UK's experts on Frame I regularly teach her work across a range of modules at Bristol. I arrived at Bristol in 2023, after holding a two-year post as Lecturer in Postcolonial Literature at the University of Keele. I was awarded my PhD from the University of Leeds in 2020, and I subsequently worked as a researcher at both the <a href="https://oclw.web.ox.ac.uk/" rel="nofollow">Oxford Centre for Life Writing</a> and <a href="https://positivenegatives.org/" rel="nofollow">PositiveNegatives</a> (SOAS, University of London). This work informs both my research and my teaching in experimental life writing, <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-37998-8_12" rel="nofollow">from visual life narratives</a>to <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08989575.2020.1741191" rel="nofollow">collaborative testimony</a>. During 2024-2025 I am the Ann Ball Bodley Visiting Fellow in Women's History at the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, where I have begun a new project on South African women writers in Britain, political exile, and the anti-apartheid movement. I would be delighted to hear from prospective PhD students working on South African literature, New Zealand writing, white settler cultures, or modern life writing.

18/09/2025 <li class="uob-content-list-item uob-publication Publication-module--publication--3CzZ0 ContentListItem-module--contentListItem--1M6ul"><h4 class="uob-heading ContentListItem-module--primary--3VrD8"><a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/en/publications/b2435db0-4d8e-402c-b230-a76bdbe6aaeb" class="uob-external-link"><span>The coastal Gothic in Aotearoa New Zealand: Reclaimed land and unsettling seas in Janet Frame’s 1960s fiction</span></a></h4><ul class="uob-authors Authors-module--authors--fKUTX"><li><a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="/people/person/Emma-Parker-8abd60cd-e78a-4dd0-b565-dbf5412bbd70/" class="uob-external-link ExternalLink-module--externalLink--3QveV"><span>Emma Parker</span></a></li></ul><div cl