Dr. Jane Kilby
School of Arts and Media
Current positions
Senior Lecturer in English and Cultural Studies
BIOGRAPHY
I joined the University of Salford in 2000, having completed a BSc in Sociology at Cardiff University; and a MA and PhD in Women’s Studies at Lancaster University. I worked as both a residential social worker and a youth worker, prior to and during my university studies.
At Salford, I started my academic career as a temporary lecturer in Sociology, was appointed a full-time lecturer in Criminology and now enjoy the post of Senior Lecturer in English and Cultural Studies. This journey across disciplines reflects my commitment to interdisciplinarity and is key to my teaching and research.
Areas of research
Politics, Ethics, Writing, Interdisciplinarity, Innovation
During my fourteen years in Sociology and Criminology I designed and delivered a range of modules, including Feminist Thought, Memory and Identity, Representing the Holocaust, and Women, Violence and Victimisation; and contributed to many more, including Intersectionality and Crime, Theoretical Criminology, Thinking Sociologically and Riots, Resistance and Revolutions.
Since moving to English and Creative, I’ve taught on a number of core and team-taught modules including Narrative, Fiction and the Novel; Popular Fiction, Utopias and Dystopias, Anthony Burgess and Contemporaries, and 21st Century Women’s Writing.
My current research-led modules are the aptly named The Test of Evil, and Descent into Hell.
I specialize in the study of violence and the cultural politics of speaking out, with a particular interest in women’s experiences and accounts of rape and sexual abuse; and I’ve a long history of publishing on victim narratives, and on suffering and trauma more generally. However in a radical departure from my usual academic practice, I’m now experimenting with a new form of reading and writing. Ficto-criticism is an approximate but enabling term for this creative enterprise. (Textual activism is another, but a colleague was not keen.) My long-term ambition is to understand what makes writing political, and thereby write toward a better future. I’ve a proof of principle article on Alice Sebold’s Lucky and The Lovely Bones (Feminist Theory), and I’m close to finishing a book about Aileen Wuornos.
Qualifications
- PhD (2000), Women’s Studies; ‘Animated Testimony: Feminism, Witnessing and Childhood Sexual Trauma’ (Lancaster University)
- MA (1995), Women’s Studies (Lancaster University)
- BSc. Econ. (Hons) (1994)
- Sociology (Cardiff University)