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Choose your year of study

2026
2027
Start date(s)
September 2026
Location
Horsforth Campus
School
Computing and Creative Industries
UCAS tariff points
104
Study mode
Full-time (3 years)
Study abroad
Yes
Call us now - 0330 058 4266
Apply now

This course is available in Clearing 2026.

Have your final results? Apply today.

Apply through Clearing Call us now - 0330 058 4266

Where will your words take you? English graduates have a cultural impact on the world we live in through their writing, from books and films to TV and news.

English graduates produced A Handmaid’s Tale and Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People about Race, both books of profound cultural impact.

English produces key cultural figures, e.g. broadcasters, filmmakers and novelists, so cinema trips we go on, news and current affairs we watch, and satirical TV and sitcoms we enjoy, owe much to English and Creative Writing.

About this course

This programme offers an opportunity to develop your creative writing skills, and imaginative flexibility, and study literary texts in English from different historical periods and a variety of genres.

You can develop your key skills in English and Creative Writing, with options to study English Language and Linguistics.

Working with published writers and subject specialists, you'll learn how to communicate and create for both professional purposes and pleasure. Our creative writing workshops will teach you how to give and receive constructive criticism about writing. You’ll be introduced to speech-writing and the power of words, as well as learning how to write your own life story and the stories of others.

You will develop your knowledge of writing in English as you read, and discuss and respond creatively to a range of great literary texts. We’ll teach you how to read and analyse poetry and short stories, as well as how to compare past and modern texts in the same genres.

You'll have the opportunity to work with an experienced writer on a final-year writing project and, beyond the curriculum, you’ll be part of Leeds Trinity's acclaimed writing culture, taking part in events like our annual Writers' Festival, monthly open mic nights and podcasting.

Why study with us?

  • Combine your passions. You'll study literary texts while developing your own creative writing skills.
  • Learn from the experts. You'll work with published writers and creative writing specialists.
  • Feel supported. You'll be part of an exceptionally supportive and encouraging literary environment, with links to the publishing world.
  • Increase your confidence, with student-led presentations and debate.
Student working on laptop.

English at Leeds Trinity Podcast

As a student you'll have the opportunity to get involved with the English at Leeds Trinity Podcast, led by Senior Lecturer in English, Dr Richard Storer. With each episode, Richard and his guests are working their way through the alphabet, discussing a range of interesting topics including language and literature, creativity, history and culture.

Course modules

You will study a variety of modules across your programme of study. The module details given below are subject to change and are the latest example of the curriculum available on this course of study.

Year 1

During your first year, you'll study five core modules.

Professional Development – Core
Applied Professional Practice – Core

You’ll plan, prepare for and deliver these practical activities, applying your skills and knowledge within a real-world professional context.

Emphasis is placed on developing confidence, professionalism and reflective practice as you demonstrate your readiness for industry-focused work.

Literary Genres – Core
Writing and Style – Core
Writing and Expression – Core

You'll begin by getting to grips with how to express thoughts and opinions in prose writing, before moving onto poetry.

You'll develop into skilled manipulators of style, voice, structure, editing and presentation.

We'll focus on the transferable nature of writing practices between different types of writing.

Year 2

During your second year, you'll study four core modules and will be required to choose up to one option module.

Victorian to Modern Literature – Core
Professional Placement – Core

You’ll prepare for a professional external placement as part of the programme’s professional pathway.

Support is provided for CV building, tailored applications, networking, self-marketing, interview preparation and wider employability skills, building on foundations introduced earlier in the degree. Learning is enhanced through insights from external speakers and industry contacts.

The module also supports planning for post-graduation employment, helping you identify potential entry-level roles, set final-year career goals and plan targeted upskilling to achieve them.

Writing and Theme – Core

You'll study, discuss and respond creatively to a range of poetry and prose dealing with myth, childhood, love and loss.

The myth element will draw on Greek and Roman mythology and that of other cultures.

Childhood, love and loss will draw on contemporary and non-contemporary literature.

You'll do creative exercises based on the texts studied, producing a body of original writing and a reflective commentary.

Language and Social Justice – Core
Life Writing – Optional

You'll explore 'writing the self', producing a portfolio of original autobiographical writing.

You'll then bring your own perspectives to writing about the lives of others, producing a biographical narrative on a subject of your choosing.

The module will reflect the make-up of the class as all students - BAME, international, of different sexualities, with disabilities, from different class backgrounds - will bring their racial, cultural and other life perspectives to the weekly group discussions of autobiography and biography.

The Story of Film – Optional

Year 3

During your final year, you'll study five core modules.

Professional Learning Through Work – Core
Writing: Breaking the Rules – Core

Combine creative writing, critical reading, and historical and theoretical components to develop your experimental writing.

You'll write using a range of procedures and strategies, looking at innovations in prose and poetry.

You'll explore techniques such as chance and substitution, and fractured narrative and time structures.

We'll also look at historical and theoretical aspects of experimental writing, drawing upon literary texts from diverse writers outside of the cultural mainstream.

Multilingualism and Identity – Core

Explore bilingualism and multilingualism as an individual and social phenomenon.

You'll build on your understanding of how children acquire language skills, and look at sociolinguistic and discourse-analytic approaches to the study of language.

Develop your understanding of language and identity by exploring the different social and discursive aspects of this phenomenon and key theoretical and methodological approaches.

Science Fiction: Speculative Storytelling – Core

Explore the genre of science fiction across a range of texts and media, including literature, film, television, graphic novels, and interactive narratives, within historical and contemporary cultural contexts.
You'll examine how science fiction has been shaped through representations of science, technology, progress, and ideas of the future and past, and how the genre has continually evolved through multiple forms and traditions. 
You'll consider the cultural significance of science fiction’s speculative narratives and their use in exploring and critiquing subjects such as utopias and dystopias, modernity, posthumanism, the monstrous, and constructions of race and gender.
Building on the theoretical and practice‑led skills developed in your degree so far, your critical understanding of genre while developing your creative writing practice will be strengthened. You'll be encouraged to synthesise theory and practice by applying critical insights into science fiction to your own creative work.

 

Research Project – Core

Professional work placements

Experience matters. That's why we embed professional work placements within the majority of our standard undergraduate degrees.

How does it work?

Careers+Placements will work with you to find a placement or help you to arrange your own, whether that's in Leeds, another part of the UK or even abroad. You will be able to take part in a series of workshops, events and live ‘employer challenges’ to boost your confidence and prepare you for your placement.

During your placement, you could have an opportunity to gain degree-relevant work experience, build your knowledge of career sectors and secure valuable employer references and industry contacts. This experience will help you to shape your career decisions and find the right path for you.

You'll complete your placements in a variety of settings, including schools, museums, local councils, charities, and media outlets, experiencing the types of careers that your degree could lead to. 

To find out how we can help you make your career ambitions a reality, visit:

Professional Work Placements


Learning and teaching

The Student Contract

Assessment

A variety of assessment methods are used, matched to the learning outcomes for your programme, allowing you to apply and demonstrate the full range of knowledge and skills that you have developed.

For more details on specific assessment methods for this course contact hello@leedstrinity.ac.uk

Programme delivery

Your time on campus, learning through in-person teaching, is at the heart of your academic experience and the way we deliver our programmes. This is supported and further enhanced by additional engagement activities and opportunities provided online and through digital teaching materials. This blended approach seeks to ensure a positive learning and teaching student experience.

Your programme of study has been carefully designed around a three-phase model of delivery:

  1. Preparation: You will be given clear tasks to support you in preparing for live teaching. This could include watching a short-pre-recorded lecture, reading a paper or text chapter or preparing other material for use in class.
  2. Live: All your live teaching will be designed around active learning, providing you with valuable opportunities to build on preparation tasks, interact with staff and peers, and surface any misunderstandings.
  3. Post: Follow-up activities will include opportunities for you to check understanding, for staff to receive feedback from you and your peers to inform subsequent sessions, and for you to apply learning to new situations or context.

Preparation, Live and Post teaching and learning and the digital materials used will vary by course, but will be designed to help you structure your learning, take a full and active part in your course, and apply and test your developing knowledge and skills.

Learning and teaching

At Leeds Trinity we aim to provide an excellent student experience and provide you with the tools and support to help you achieve your academic, personal and professional potential.

Our Learning, Teaching and Assessment Strategy delivers excellence by providing the framework for:

  • high quality teaching
  • an engaging and inclusive approach to learning, assessment and achievement
  • a clear structure through which you progress in your academic studies, your personal development and towards professional-level employment or further study.

We have a strong reputation for developing student employability, supporting your development towards graduate employment, with relevant skills embedded throughout your programme of study.

We endeavour to develop curiosity, confidence, courage, ambition and aspiration in all students through the key themes in our Learning and Teaching Strategy:

  • Student Involvement and Engagement
  • Inclusion
  • Integrated Programme and Assessment Experience
  • Digital Literacy and Skills
  • Employability and Enterprise

To help you achieve your potential we emphasise learning as a collaborative process, with a range of student-led and real-world activities. This approach ensures that you fully engage in shaping your own learning, developing your critical thinking and reflective skills so that you can identify your own strengths and weaknesses, and use the extensive learning support system we offer to shape your own development.

We believe the secret to great learning and teaching is simple: it is about creating an inclusive learning experience that allows all students to thrive through:

  • Personalised support
  • Expert lecturers
  • Strong connections with employers
  • An international outlook
  • Understanding how to use tools and technology to support learning and development

Entry requirements

Leeds Trinity University is committed to recruiting students with talent and potential and who we feel will benefit greatly from their academic and non-academic experiences here. We treat every application on its own merits; we value highly the experience you illustrate in your personal statement.

Information about the large range of qualifications we accept, including A-Levels, BTECs and T Levels, can be found on our entry requirements page. If you need additional advice or are taking qualifications that are not covered in the information supplied, please contact our Admissions Office.

Leeds Trinity University is committed to recruiting students with talent and potential and who we feel will benefit greatly from their academic and non-academic experiences here. We treat every application on its own merits; we value highly the experience you illustrate in your personal statement.

The following information is designed to give you a general overview of the qualifications we accept. If you are taking qualifications that are not included below, please contact our Admissions Office who will be happy to advise you.

Entry requirements for this course:
UCAS tariff 104
GCSE requirements GCSE English Language at grade C or 4 (or higher) will be required

Fees and finance

UK Home fees

£9,790

Full-time

International fees

More information on international tuition fees

Funding

UK Home Students:

Tuition fees cost £9,790 a year for this course in 2026/2027.

Tuition fees for part-time study are charged a pro-rata amount of the full-time equivalent.

Depending on government policy, tuition fees may change in future years.

Tuition fees for 2027/2028 entry will be set in summer 2026.

Living costs, e.g. accommodation, travel, food, will also need to be taken into consideration.

Leeds Trinity offers a range of bursaries and scholarships to help support students while you study.

International Students, including EU Students:

Visit our webpage for international students.

Part-time study is not available for international students on a Student Route Visa. 

Additional costs

We advise students that there may be additional course costs in addition to annual tuition fees:

  • Recommended and required reading lists will be provided at the start of your course. All the books and e-books are available from our Library to borrow but you may choose to purchase your own.
  • On some courses there may be additional costs, such as field trips, equipment, accreditations, that may be part-funded by the University. More details will be provided at the start of the course.
  • You'll need to include placement/s travel and associated costs too, however the University will contribute a standard amount towards your total expenditure.
  • The University provides students with a £6 printing credit each academic year which can be topped up either on campus or online.

How to apply

For full-time undergraduate courses, you apply through UCAS. That's the University and Colleges Admissions Service.

You can still secure your place for courses starting in September 2026. To do this, you apply through Clearing.

On your application form, you'll need to know our institution code - it's L24 - and the course code. If you click through to the UCAS website using the button below, it'll take you to the right place with all the information you need.

As part of your application, you'll need to write a personal statement - we've prepared a guide to help you.

Applications are open for courses starting in September 2026. You have until Tuesday, 30 June 2026, to apply. After this date, you can apply through Clearing.

Undergraduate applications for September 2027 entry are now open. 

There's lots more information about the application process on the UCAS website, or you can get in touch with our Admissions team who will be happy to help:

Apply through Clearing Call us now – 0330 058 4266

Graduate opportunities

Providing you with the opportunity to develop the professional skills and experience you need to launch your career is at the heart of everything we do at Leeds Trinity University.

Our students have gone on work in a wide range of organisations – from film production companies and recording studios, to local newspapers and MPs' offices and to teaching, after further study. Some graduates go on to complete the MA in Creative Writing at Leeds Trinity.

After you graduate, Careers and Placements will help you as you pursue your chosen career through our mentoring scheme, support with CV and interview preparation and access to graduate employability events.

To find out how we can help you make your career ambitions a reality, visit:

Careers

Meet the team

Juliette Taylor-Batty.

Juliette Taylor-Batty

Juliette Taylor-Batty

Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature

Overview

Juliette Taylor-Batty is Associate Professor (Research) of English and Comparative Literature at Leeds Trinity. Her research focuses on literary multilingualism, particularly in twentieth-century writing, and she has published widely in journals including Modernism/Modernity, Modernist Cultures and Comparative Literature. She is the author of Multilingualism in Modernist Fiction (Palgrave, 2013) and co-author of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (Bloomsbury, 2009).

She sits on the editorial boards of the Journal of Literary Multilingualism, Comparative Critical Studies, and the Brill book series Literary Multilingualism. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, is on the organising committee of the Northern Modernism Seminar, and served as an elected member of the Executive Committee of the British Association for Modernist Studies 2019-2022, where she stood as Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Officer for the Association.

Qualifications

  • PGCertLTHE, University of Leeds (2006)
  • Doctor of Philosophy, University of Warwick (2004)
  • Master of Arts, University of Sussex (1999)
  • Bachelor of Arts, University of Oxford (1996)

Speciality Areas

Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Literature, particularly modernism. Literary multilingualism. 

Current Research

Juliette's research examines multilingualism and translational processes in literary texts. Her current research centres on literary modernism, but she maintain an active interest in later twentieth and twenty-first-century literature, including postmodern and postcolonial literature. She has published on writers including Jean Rhys, T.S. Eliot, Eugene Jolas, Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov and Salman Rushdie. She co-edited the inaugural issue of the Journal of Literary Multilingualism with Till Dembeck, with whom she also co-edits a regular section of the journal entitled ‘Reflections and Debates in Literary Multilingualism Studies’.

Her current book project, M/Other Tongues: Multilingualism, Gender and Modernism, examines the very gendered conceptions of language that we find in notions such as the ‘mother tongue’ and translational ‘fidelity’ and examines the implications of this for multilingual literature. Whereas male anglophone writers such as Joyce, Beckett, Conrad and Nabokov are firmly fixed within a ‘canon’ of literary multilingualism studies, the multilingualism of female Anglophone modernist writers has had much less critical attention. This project will reveal the importance of multilingualism to the work of writers such as Jean Rhys, Mina Loy, Hope Mirrlees and Nancy Cunard, and will examine the reasons why this has remained relatively hidden, including the barriers to multilingual publishing and the persistent ideology of the ‘mother tongue’.

She has also started to develop a new research project that examines the implications of perceptual diversity in literature, including conditions such as synesthesia and aphantasia. She has recently published an article in Comparative Literature which examines synesthesia in Samuel Beckett and Arthur Rimbaud.

Publications

For a full list of publications, please see: Juliette Taylor-Batty – Research Outputs — Leeds Trinity University Research Portal

‘Hope Mirrlees, the Holophrase, and Colonial Linguistics.’ Modernism/Modernity Print Plus (forthcoming)

‘Je est un autre’: Beckett’s Not I, Rimbaud and Synesthesia.’ Comparative Literature 75.1 (March 2023), 89-110

‘Eliot’s Anxious Multilingualism.’ T.S. Eliot Studies Annual 4 (July 2022), 293-308

‘“Le Revenant”: Baudelaire’s afterlife in Wide Sargasso Sea.’ Modernism/Modernity 27.4 (November 2020), 665-688

‘On the Frontier: Eugene Jolas and Multilingual Modernism.’ Dibur 7 (Fall 2019), 7-20 (invited contributor)

‘“Everything’s been done before”: Jean Rhys, translation and the politics of originality.’ Modernist Cultures 14.4 (Winter 2019), 498-521

Books

Multilingualism in Modernist Fiction (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013)

Samuel Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot,’ co-authored with Mark Taylor-Batty, Continuum Modern Theatre Guides (London: Bloomsbury, 2009)

Book chapters

‘transition, untranslatability and the “Revolution of the Word”.’ Multilingual Literature as World Literature, ed. by Jane Hiddleston and Wen-chin Ouyang (London: Bloomsbury, 2021)

‘On Not Knowing Languages: Modernism, Untranslatability and Newness.’ Understanding Misunderstanding, vol. 1: Cross-Cultural Translation, ed. by Tamara Brzostowska-Tereszkiewicz, Magdalena Rembowska-Pluciennik and Beata Sniecikowska (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2020), pp. 41-65.

Email
Linda Walz SFHEA.

Linda Walz SFHEA

Linda Walz SFHEA

Programme Leader for MA TESOL

Overview

Growing up in multilingual Switzerland with its diglossia of Swiss German and Standard German, Linda has been fascinated by language from an early age and is fortunate to follow this passion in her professional life. She began her career as a teacher of English and German in Swiss secondary education, before moving to Yorkshire to complete a PhD in Linguistics at the University of Leeds. 

Linda’s research interests are language, identity and social interaction. Her doctoral research explored ‘expat blogs’ about transnational relocation, focusing on how moving abroad impacts on people’s sense of identity. More recently, she has been studying the language of misogyny in morning TV shows, how people use social media to sanction problematic conduct, as well as exploring students’ motivation and expectations of studying abroad. 

Linda is the Programme Leader for MA Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL),  and she also teaches on the BA English and Creative Writing programme. Her modules include the study of second language acquisition, English language teaching, language and identity, as well as multilingualism. 

In her spare time, Linda enjoys language learning and finding out more about how different languages work.

Qualifications

  • PhD in Linguistics, University of Leeds
  • BA and MA in English and German Philology, University of Basel, Switzerland
  • Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA)
  • Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) in England
  • Qualified Teacher of English and German in Switzerland 

Speciality Areas

Second Language Acquisition, English Language Teaching, Language and Identity, Language, Gender and Sexuality, Sociolinguistics and Pragmatics, Multilingualism, Dissertation.

Current Research

Accountability of public conduct on social media 

The language of misogyny in morning television shows 

Interpreters’ experiences of UK asylum claims based on sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) 

Student expectations of study abroad 

Identifying good practices through the investigation of authentic recordings of viva voce examinations.

Publications

Walz, L., Joyce, J. B. & Flint, N. (2024). “Facebook’s about to know, Karen”: Mobilising social media to sanction public conduct. Internet Pragmatics, 7(1), 137-160. https://doi.org/10.1075/ip.00104.wal 

Ridley, A., Humă, B. & Walz, L. (2024). Porridge and misogyny: Rationalising inconspicuous misogyny in morning television shows. Feminism & Psychology, 34(2), 228-250. https://doi.org/10.1177/09593535231197526  

Walz, L., Haines Lyon, C., Bright, G., Walton, J. & Reid, K. (2023). Unlocking education through relationship building: Identity and agency in English educational institutions during Covid-19. British Educational Research Journal, 49(4), 711-730. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3865 

Joyce, J. B. & Walz, L. (2022). Picking fights with politicians: Categories, partitioning and the achievement of antagonism. Pragmatics, 32(4), 562-587. https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.21028.joy  

Walz, L. & Fitzgerald, R. (2020). A stranger in a foreign land: Identity transition in blogs about transnational relocation. Discourse, Context & Media, 36, 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2020.100413   

Walz, L. (2020). ‘You wanted to know about expat life’: Authenticating identity in blogs about transnational relocation. Text & Talk, 40(3), 377-397. https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2020-2060 

Book chapter: 

Walz, L. (2021). “It’s time to shift this blog a bit”: Categorial negotiation as a local and cumulative accomplishment. In J. Meredith, D. Giles & W. Stommel (Eds.), Analysing digital interaction (pp. 65-86). Palgrave

Podcast Credits

Guest on “Betwixt the Sheets” episode on “The surprising history of ‘Karens’”: 

https://play.acast.com/s/betwixt-the-sheets/the-surprising-history-of-karens 

Email
Oz Hardwick.

Oz Hardwick

Oz Hardwick

Professor of Creative Writing

Overview

Professor Oz Hardwick is a poet and academic, with particular interests in prose poetry, ekphrasis, and creative collaboration. He has published thirteen full poetry collections and chapbooks, his most recent full collection being A Census of Preconceptions (SurVision Books. 2022). Additionally, he has co-authored several books, as well as publishing numerous articles and book chapters on poetics and creative practice. Oz’s edited volumes include Prose Poetry in Theory and Practice, ed. Anne Caldwell and Oz Hardwick (Routledge, 2022) and Dancing About Architecture and Other Ekphrastic Maneuvers, ed. Oz Hardwick and Cassandra Atherton (MadHat Press, 2024).

Oz’s awards include the 2019 Rubery International Book Award for poetry and the 2024 Dolors Alberola International Poetry Prize, and in 2022 he was awarded the ARC Poetry Prize for “a lifetime devotion and service to the cause of prose poetry”. He has held residencies in Europe, the US, and Australia, and has had several hundred individual poems published in international anthologies and journals.

Oz has a secondary academic interest is the art and literature of the European Middle Ages, and their subsequent adaptations and appropriations, particularly in the fields of misericords, marginal arts, and animal iconography. He is the author of English Medieval Misericords: The Margins of Meaning (Boydell Press, 2011) and many articles.

Oz’s other passions are music and photography – he has a modest discography extensive photographic credits for magazines, books, and record covers – which he is increasingly incorporating into his academic work. 

Oz currently teaches primarily in Creative Writing, and has supervised PhDs in both Creative Writing and medievalism.

Qualifications

  • DPhil (University of York) in late medieval vernacular anticlericalism

Speciality Areas

Creative Writing, Poetry, Experimental Writing.

Current Research

  • Ekphrasis
  • Creativity and neurodiversity
  • Place writing and wellbeing

Publications

‘“My memory is / songs and whispers”: Poetry, Identity, and Cosmic Rock & Roll,’ Western Humanities Review 76 (2024)

‘Not Paying Attention: Fast and Loose Ekphrasis,’ Axon 13.2 (2023)

‘Collaboration, Fragmentation, and Invoking the Absent Writer,’ with Amina Alyal, in Writing in Education 86 (2022): 32-8.

‘Summoning Ghosts and Releasing Angels: Challenging the Tyranny of the Blank Page,’ with Amina Alyal, Writing in Practice 6 (2020), 99-105.

Books

Retrofuturism for the Dispossessed (Hedgehog Poetry Press, 2024)

Dancing About Architecture and Other Ekphrastic Maneuvers, ed. Oz Hardwick and Cassandra Atherton (MadHat Press, 2024).

Five Oceans, with Cassandra Atherton, Paul Hetherington, Paul Munden and Jen Webb (Authorised Theft/Recent Work Press, 2023)

A Census of Preconceptions (Dublin: SurVision Books, 2022)

Prose Poetry in Theory and Practice, ed. Anne Caldwell and Oz Hardwick (Routledge, 2022)

Other (e.g. magazine articles)

‘The Poetic Impulse and Dancing About Architecture,’ in Writing in Education 88 (2022): 28-9.

‘Collaboration, Fragmentation, and Invoking the Absent Writer,’with Amina Alyal, in Writing in Education 86 (2022): 32-8.

Oz is also a frequent contributor to the national music press.

Email

Can you give an example of a professional career highlight and/or experience that informs your teaching of your subject area?

I have way too many highlights to choose just one, as I’m fortunate in having a career that I love, and which continues to excite me – it’s why I do it! I think I’ll go for the publication of my first poetry collection, though. Subsequently, I’ve been lucky enough to have published many books, won international awards, read and talked about my work all over the world, and also had the pleasure of watching many, many of my students flourish in their writing. But I come from a working-class family in which no one had ever even thought of writing a book, no one had been to university, and all of that kind of thing had just seemed like a different world. So, when that book came out, and my mum and dad were at the launch (where they met some of my LTU colleagues for the first time), it was very special indeed.

During your career, who are some of the most interesting people you’ve worked with (or interviewed/photographed), and why?

It’s a cliché, but absolutely true: a great many of my students have been the most interesting people I’ve worked with. That curiosity and freshness of vision which comes with each new intake of students is endlessly invigorating. At the same time, I’ve been lucky enough to have worked with the people I admire that I’ve mentioned above, and a brilliant bunch of colleagues at LTU. The thing is, I work in an area that attracts interesting people: and, of course, as a writer – even one who works at quite a remove from Realism – it’s part of the job description to seek out the interesting.

Can you give an example of the most interesting project you’ve worked on?

The current project is what’s most interesting at present. Since 2022, I’ve been leading a project based upon ekphrasis – that is, written responses to art in other media – that has involved workshops, articles, poems, and performances, with poets, academics and members of the public, in both the UK and Australia. The highlight so far was an international symposium in Leeds in July 2024, at which, along with cutting-edge discussion of current practice and thinking, we launched the book Dancing about Architecture and Other Ekphrastic Maneuvers, which I co-edited with Cassandra Atherton, which contains poems and discussions of poetic practice by sixty writers from all around the world. And there are still exciting times ahead.
Robbie McAllister.

Robbie McAllister

Robbie McAllister

Senior Lecturer and Programme Lead for Film

Overview

Since beginning his own degree, Robbie has rooted his writing and research in the field of film studies. His doctoral research, which focuses on questions of nostalgia, retrofuturism, and sci-fi subgenres, has been published by Bloomsbury under the title of Steampunk Film: A Critical Introduction (2019). His further contributions to these subjects can be evidenced within various journals, edited collections, and conferences released since this date. In this time, he has produced works that explore subjects including folk horror, animation, as well as South and East Asian filmmaking. His upcoming biography of Roddy McDowall contextualises the actor and photographer’s career alongside debates of queer stardom and sixty years of Hollywood’s history. Robbie aligns his two greatest passions, film studies and animal rights, in his public-facing writing, which can be found at creaturefeatures.blog. This work explores onscreen representations of anthrozoology, foodways, and ecocriticism.

Qualifications

  • Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, University of Leeds
  • PGCHE, Leeds Trinity University
  • PhD in Film Studies, Aberystwyth University
  • MA in Screenwriting, Aberystwyth University

Speciality Areas

Film history and industries, Cult and genre cinema, Animation, stop-motion production, and materiality, Queer stardom and performance, South and East Asian filmmaking, Anthrozoology, ecocriticism, and foodways. 

Current Research

A biography of actor and photographer Roddy McDowall for Kentucky University Press.

Several articles on contemporary adaptations of Frankenstein.

An upcoming chapter on Indian film censorship for Global Bollywood.

An upcoming chapter on queer folk horror film, The Ballad of Tam Lin for Queer Horror: A Companion.

Publications

  1. ‘Streaming Steam: Crafting Online Retrofutures in Steampunk Short Film,’ (ed. Gerry Canavan, Dan Hassler-Forest and Ida Yoshinaga) Science Fiction Film & Television: 15.3, pp. 295-313.
  2. ‘Punking the Machine: Steampunk Hollywood and the Adaptive Practices of a Grave-Robbing Genre,’ (ed. Shannon Wells-Lassagne and Eckart Voigts) Filming the Past, Screening the Present: Studies in Anglophone Literatures: 44, pp. 55-66.

2021: ‘Twenty Thousand Leagues East: Around the World with Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water,’ (ed. Aris Mousoutzanis and Yugin Teo) Science Fiction Studies: Extrapolating Nostalgia, pp. 46-61.

2019: ‘The Clockwork Occult: Evaluating the Scientific Fantastic in Steampunk Cinema,’ (ed. Andrea Grunert) Film Journal 5 / Screening the Supernatural pp. 12-25.

2018: ‘Reengineering Modernity: Cinematic Detritus and the Steampunk Blockbuster,’ (ed. Chris Louttit and Erin Louttit) Screening the Victorians in the Twenty-First Century (Neo-Victorian Studies 11: 1), pp. 15-37.

2017. ‘Dreams of Steam: Fetishising an Age of Industry in Contemporary Steampunk Cinema,’ (ed. Anna Annotnowicz and Tomasz Niedokos) Studies in Literature and Culture: 14. pp. 41 – 60.  

Books

2019: Steampunk Film: A Critical Introduction. Monograph, New York: Bloomsbury.

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Rod Hermeston.

Rod Hermeston

Rod Hermeston

Lecturer in Linguistics

Overview

Rod Hermeston originally comes from Newcastle in Tyneside. He has a wide range of linguistic interests, which started with the study of identity in his own dialect, known as ‘Geordie’. 

He completed a PhD at the University of Leeds in 2009 on the topic of Linguistic Identity in Nineteenth-Century Tyneside Dialect Songs. The first research article he had published (with great pride) was about the song The Blaydon Races, the unofficial ‘national anthem’ for Tyneside. Rod has taught at various universities in the north of England and joined Leeds Trinity University in 2019, where he is now a Senior Lecturer in Linguistics. He teaches on the MA Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), leading the modules English Language and Research, and Applied Linguistics: Language, Employment and Social Justice. He also teaches on the BA (Hons) English and Creative Writing degree, giving classes in creative writing, and has also led modules in Stylistics, along with Language, Society and Media, while also offering classes in medieval literature.  

Rod has a Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults and has also previously taught English for Academic Purposes. 

Since completing his doctorate, Rod’s research interests have shifted to disability, and he is currently developing a new research area, disability stylistics. This considers how literary and media representations of disabled people through language shape beliefs about disabled people. He also researches the lived experience of people with diagnosed communication difficulties. This represents a return to the field of disability for Rod, who worked as a disability journalist in his early career.

Qualifications

  • PhD Linguistic Identity in Nineteenth-Century Tyneside Dialect Songs, University of Leeds
  • Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults (CELTA), Kirklees College
  • MA in English Literature, University of Leeds
  • Postgraduate Diploma in Journalism Studies, University of Strathclyde
  • BA (Hons.) English, University of Leeds

Current Research

  • Disability stylistics, the representation of disabled people through language in literature and the media
  • The lived experience of people with communication difficulties
  • Language and identity

Publications

Hermeston, R. & Rutter, B. (2026). Voices from the margins: The value of a blog for people with communication difficulties. In K. Kondo, S. Vilar-Lluch, M. Tsimpiri, T. Zhou, & A. Musolff (Eds.). Discourses of Inclusive and Exclusionary Health Communication: Healthcare, Language, and Inclusivity, Volume 1 (pp. 153-166). Taylor & Francis. 

Hermeston, R. (2025). The role of metaphor and indexicality in the reinforcement of social meanings of disability. In J. Setter, S. Dovchin, & V. Ramjattan (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Language and Prejudice (pp. 168-192). Oxford University Press.  

Hermeston, R. (2022). Disability stylistics: an illustration based on Pew in Stevenson’s Treasure Island. Language & Literature, 3(2), 173-194. DOI: 10.1177/09639470221122101 

Rutter B. & Hermeston R. (2019). The space between words: on the description of Parkinson’s disease in Jonathan Franzen’s 'The Corrections'. Medical Humanities, 47(1), 56-60. DOI: 10.1136/medhum-2018-011536

Hermeston, R. (2017). Towards a critical stylistics of disability. Journal of Language and Discrimination, 1(1), 34-60. 

Hermeston, R. (2014). Indexing Bob Cranky: social meaning and the voices of pitmen and keelmen in early nineteenth-century Tyneside dialect song. Victoriographies, 3(2), 156-80. DOI: 10.3366/vic.2014.0168

Hermeston, R. (2011). ‘The Blaydon Races’: Lads and lasses, song tradition, and the evolution of an anthem. Language & Literature, 20(4), 269-82. DOI: 10.1177/0963947011398281

Other

Hermeston, R. (2020). Metaphor and indexicality in 'The Pitman's Pay': the ambivalence of dialect. In P. Honeybone & W. Maguire (Eds.), Dialect Writing and the North of England (pp. 168-187). Edinburgh University Press.

Hermeston, R. (2017). Tensions, transformations and local identity: the evolving meanings of nineteenth-century Tyneside dialect songs. In J. Goodridge & B. Keegan (Eds.), A History of British Working Class Literature (pp. 281-295). Cambridge University Press.

Hermeston, R. (2017). Language, differentiation and convergence: the shifting ideologies of Tyneside dialect song in the nineteenth century. In J. Hodson (Ed.), Dialect and Literature in the Long Nineteenth Century (pp. 127-145). Routledge.

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