An immersive creative writing PhD
My creative writing PhD project, working title Intertidal, is a collection of creative-critical essays that blend memoir, nature writing and criticism to explore how immersive acts like surfing and swimming connect us, for better and worse, to ourselves, our environment and each other.
Drawing on my own experiences of immersing myself in the intertidal zones, both close to the place I call home and further afield, I want to explore the ways in which people and places are connected, and disconnected, by our shared use of the world’s oceans and seas. As well as tracking my personal responses to the experience of immersion, I am researching the cultural, sociological, geographic and ecological histories of the places immerse myself in, with a focus on literal and metaphoric intertidal zones.
I began the PhD in early 2018, within the Aberdeen–Curtin Alliance program following a competitive, merit-based selection process. Established in early 2017, the Alliance combines 500 years of academic strength, history and tradition at Scotland’s University of Aberdeen with the ambition and innovation of the rapidly growing Curtin University, based in Perth, Western Australia. As a creative writing PhD candidate within this collaborative program, I have spent time in both Australia and Scotland (though the Scotland leg was interrupted by Covid), and receive a fully-funded scholarship with living stipend for the duration. I hope to complete in mid-2023.
Publications
Forthcoming:
‘Surfing with Seabirds’ in Swamphen: a Journal of Cultural Ecology (ASLEC-ANZ), Vol 9. Forthcoming in 2023.
June 2022:
The Ocean Sounds Like a Motorway in Island Australian Nature Writing Project.
November 2021:
The Sea in our Bodies: writing in/with/from the Intertidal Zone in Text Journal of Writing and Writing Courses special edition ‘Surfing and Creative Writing’ edited by Nigel Krauth, Sally Breen, Tim Baker and Jake Sandtner.