Dr Laura Gallon

Post:	Research Associate (English)
Email:	L.Gallon@sussex.ac.uk
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Biography

I hold a PhD from the University of Sussex (Brighton, UK) where I teach, and am currently working on a monograph on contemporary short fiction by postcolonial and migrant women writers in North America. In the past few years I have had the opportunity to undertake a research placement at the British Library to assess their holdings in terms of North American migrant narratives, to publish articles in cultural magazines (including Archivoz and Voice), and have presented work at national and international seminars and conferences.

Role

Postdoctoral Tutor in English (Media, Arts and Humanities)

Research Associate in English (Media, Arts and Humanities)

Qualifications

2016-2021. PhD English Literature (University of Sussex)

2014-2016. MA English (Université de Haute Bretagne, Rennes 2, France & Nazareth College, Rochester NY).

2011-2014. BA English (Université de Haute Bretagne, Rennes 2, France)

Activities

Teaching & Tutoring

Postdoctoral Research Mentor for the Junior Research Associate Programme (July - October 2021)

Tutor: "Race, Ethnicity and Nationalism" 2nd year seminar (Spring 2021)

Tutor: "Thinking Literature 2" 1st year seminar (Spring 2021)

Tutor: "The African American Experience" 2nd year seminar (Autumn 2020)

Tutor: The Migrant Writer - MA course (Spring 2020)

Tutor: Representations of Ethnic Food in Popular Culture - Foundation course (Autumn 2019)

Tutor: Thinking Literature 2 (Spring 2019)

Tutor: Thinking Literature 1 (Autumn 2018)

Occasional Replacing Tutor: Jean Rhys, Jamaica Kincaid and the Postcolonial Caribbean (Autumn 2018)

Doctoral Research Mentor for the Junior Research Associate Programme (July-October 2018)

Co-Teaching: The Literatures of Africa (Spring 2018)

Selected Conference Presentations & Talks

"The 'Short Story Snack' and Migrant Fiction." Short Fiction: Landscape and Temporality, University of Manchester, October 2023. [invited]

"Inclusivity and the ‘Short Story Renaissance’." Short Fiction as World Literature Conference, University of Lisbon, October 2022.

“Jhumpa Lahiri’s Linguistic Exile: Breaking Away from the Burden of Representation in Dove Mi Trovo (2018) and In Altre Parole (2015).” Contemporary Women Writing Race: Textual Interventions and Intersections Symposium, CWWA, Zoom, 10 Sept. 2021.

“Instapoetry and Hypercapitalism.” Roundtable Speaker. British Association of American Studies Digital Conference, 6-11 Apr. 2021. [invited]

“The Migrant Short Story: Uncovering a Genre.” No Place to Go? Perspectives on Displacement, Belonging and Non-Belonging, University of Delhi, 18-20 Mar. 2021.

“Women Writing Home: The Migrant Short Story.” Work-In-Progress Panel, English Colloquium, University of Sussex, 7 Oct. 2020.

"Genre, Gender and Ethnicity: Instagram's Identity Poetics", Reading #Instapoetry, University of Glasgow (May 27th, 2020). [invited]

“Short Stories & Recipes: A Reflection on Food, Gender and Genre”, Short Fiction as Humble Fiction, Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3 (October 17-19, 2019).

"A Space for Being: Cookbooks, Literary ‘Food Porn’, and Migrant Women", Summer Scholars, British Library (August 5th, 2019). [invited]

“The Migrant Suitcase in Contemporary Diasporic Literature in English, French and Italian: Unpacking a Highly-Charged Literary Symbol”, Objects in Focus, University of Sussex (May 9th, 2019).

“Migrant Suitcases at the Customs: Foreign Foods, Smells of Otherness and Porous Borders in Migrant Narratives,” British Association of American Studies, University of Sussex (April 26th, 2019).

"Cornflakes and Milk, and Egg Curry: Gender and Food in Migrant Fiction”, EGStravaganza (English Graduate Seminar), University of Sussex (April 11th, 2019).

“Collecting Contemporary North American Migrant Narratives at the British Library”, Staff Talks: British Library PhD Research Placements, British Library (August 23rd, 2018).

“Women Writing Diaspora: The Short Story”, Quick-fire Thesis, Alan Turing Institute and British Library (August 7th, 2018).

“Contemporary Short Fiction by North American Immigrant Women Writers”, American Studies Roundtable, School of English, University of Sussex (October 3rd, 2017).

"Crossing Spatial and Symbolic Borders in Shani Mootoo’s 'The Upside-Downness of the World as it Unfolds’", Between Borders: Exploring Spaces of Exclusion and Belonging in Global Migration, Migration Research Unit, University College London (June 9th, 2017).

‘“Americans Cook Things Right”: Cultural Assimilation in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “The Arrangers of Marriage”’, Sussex Migration Graduate Conference 2017, Sussex Centre for Migration Research, University of Sussex (26-27 April 2017).

Publications & Book Reviews

"'The Floodgates Have Been Opened': Instapoetry and the Recentering of Marginalized Poets." Reading #Instapoetry: A Poetics of Instagram, edited by James Mackay and JuEunhae Knox, pp. 99-114.

"Uncovering and Recentring the Migrant Short Story", European Network of Short Story Research (ENSFR) Blog, March 2022.

"A Personal Anthology of Short Stories by Migrant Women", A Personal Anthology, edited by Jonathan Gibbs, October 2021.

"Instapoetry: An Innovative Form Born Out Of Necessity", Voice Magazine, 03/10/2019.

"'[Insta]Poetry Is Not a Luxury': On the Urgency of Archiving the Diverse Voices of Social Media", Archivoz, 06/03/2019.

[republished in the Copyright Licensing Agency's Higher Education Blog, 03/10/2019]

"Contemporary Feminism and Women’s Short Stories", Contemporary Women’s Writing, 2019.

"Translating Cultures: French Caribbean History, Literature and Migration", British Library European Studies Blog, January 2019.

"Instapoetry & Twiction: Social Media, Short Form Migrant Writing and Collection Practices", British Library American Collections Blog, September 2018.

"Canada and Its Literature: A Tale of More Than Two Cultures 2/2", British Library American Collections Blog, August 2018.

"Canada and Its Literature: A Tale of More Than Two Cultures 1/2", British Library American Collections Blog, August 2018.

"Junot Diaz and the Decolonial Imagination (eds. Monica Hanna, Jennifer Harford Vargas & José David Salvidar, 2016)", Textual Practice, vol. 32, n. 4, March 2018, pp. 732-737.

Conference Organization

Chair: “Images and Ideas in Contemporary Fiction”, British Association for American Studies, University of Sussex (April 25-27, 2019).

Chair: “Extraction Then and Now: Integrating Contemporary Black Literature” by Christine Okoth (University of Warwick), English Colloquium, University of Sussex (February 20th, 2019).

Chair: “Which metaphors are embodied, when and by whom? Variation in the lived experience of metaphor” by Jeannette Littlemore (University of Birmingham), English Colloquium, University of Sussex (November 28th, 2018).

Helper: "Translating Cultures: French Caribbean History, Literature and Migration", British Library (September 24th, 2018).

Co-organiser: "East African Literary Cultures: from Writivism to Kintu and Beyond", School of English and Sussex Africa Centre, University of Sussex (April 10th, 2018).

Other Activities

Assistant Editor at Bloomsbury Academic (2024-Present)

Editorial Assistant at Bloomsbury Academic (2021-2024)

Editor-in-Chief at Excursions (2021-2022)

Co-organiser of the Hidden Shelf Book Club at the University of Sussex (Autumn 2019)

Research Placement on Migrant Narratives at the British Library (June-September 2018)

Professional Afiliations

Contemporary Women’s Writing Association (CWWA)

European Network for Short Fiction Research (ENSFR)