Professor Fiona Doloughan

Across my academic career to date, I have worked in various disciplinary settings: European Studies; Education; and English & Creative Writing. Yet across those somewhat different settings, my focus has always been on language/s, literature/s and writing practices. My academic home is in Comparative Literature and my PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA looked at concepts of realism in the 19^th and 20^th century French and English novels; I also have a Masters in Applied Linguistics from the University of Reading. Prior to joining the Open University, I taught Creative Writing for several years in the newly established Department of English at the University of Surrey. Since joining the Open University in May 2011, I have occupied a number of roles, including a brief stint as Head of Department (2015-7). 

My research revolves around the development of the novel and on the forces (societal, cultural, technological, linguistic) shaping that development. My first monograph, Contemporary Narrative: textual production, multimodality and multiliteracies (Continuum, 2011) focussed on identifying and illustrating through a case study approach some key trends and issues in a range of 20^th and early 21^st century narratives through the dual lens of multimodality and multiliteracies. It treated storytelling across modes and media as well as examining the kinds of stories told by writers with access to more than one language and culture.

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/contemporary-narrative-9781441121998/

My second monograph, English as a Literature in Translation (Bloomsbury, 2016) picked up in effect where the first one left off, focussing on ‘narratives of translation’, that is to say narrative works produced by writers with access to more than one language and culture where issues of translation (in multiple senses) are thematised in and contribute to their creative practice.

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/english-as-a-literature-in-translation-9781628924275/

My third monograph, Radical Realism, Autofictional Narratives and the Reinvention of the Novel (Anthem Press, 2023) treated modes of fictionality and the fact-fiction borderlands in auto/biography, memoir and autofiction with specific reference to the work of Karl Ove Knausgaard, Rachel Cusk, Jeanette Winterson and Xiaolu Guo.

https://anthempress.com/radical-realism-autofictional-narratives-and-the-reinvention-of-the-novel-hb

I am a member of two Research Groups within the Department of English & Creative Writing, namely Contemporary Cultures of Writing and the Postcolonial and Global Literatures Research Groups.

I have supervised to completion students in Translation Studies, Creative Writing, and English Literature and am currently co-supervising (with Emma Sweeney) postgraduate research student Rebekah Lattin-Rawstrone who is completing a PhD in Creative Writing. Rebekah is working on a multi-strand novel on the life and legacy of Gertrude Bell and in her quest for an alternative novelistic form is posing questions about ‘narrative imperialism’. 

I have chaired panel discussions on literature in translation at the British Library and at the MK Lit Fest and co-organized literature and creative writing events at Senate House under the auspices of the Contemporary Cultures of Writing Research Group.