Staff Profile

I joined the School of English at Newcastle in 2021. Before that, I was a Lecturer in English at Nottingham Trent University and held teaching and research positions at the University of Nottingham, the University of Leicester, and York St John University. I completed my AHRC-funded PhD at the University of Nottingham (2017 - 2021), where my thesis examined how contemporary writers in the North of England engage with constitutional tensions throughout the UK. Before my doctoral studies, I trained as a secondary English teacher and I maintain a keen interest in educational policy.

My research interests address the relationship between British literature and political change since 1945, with a particular emphasis on race, class, nation, and the literary identity of Northern England. My first book, Rewriting the North: Contemporary British Fiction and the Politics of Devolution (Routledge, 2023) situates Northern England at the centre of a new devolutionary approach to contemporary British fiction. Through close readings of six contemporary authors – Sunjeev Sahota, Sarah Hall, Anthony Cartwright, Adam Thorpe, Fiona Mozley, and Sarah Moss – I map the emergence of a political English regionalism in the North that directly challenges the tenability of the centralised British state form.

My current major project is my second monograph, The Postcolonial North: Writing Race and Place After Empire, which provides the first study of Northern England’s postcolonial literary identity. Covering a range of novels, plays, and short story anthologies alongside the rise of the ‘cultural industries’, The Postcolonial North documents the innovative ways in which Black and Asian British writers across the region engage with Britain’s imperial decline and ongoing constitutional fragmentation.

I also have secondary research interests in literary representations of the body, particularly in relation to the shifting dynamics of class under neoliberalism. I am currently writing an article which explores evaluative forms of embodiment in post-millennial British fiction.

I welcome enquiries for postgraduate supervision in any of these areas.

In 2023/4, I will be teaching on the following modules:

• Introduction to Literary Studies 1 (Year 1)
• Contemporary Cultures (Year 2)
• Independent Research Project (Year 2)
• Dissertation (Year 3)
• Literary Geographies (Postgraduate)
• Research Methods 1 (Postgraduate)

• Articles

  • Ashbridge C. Precarity's Thermo-Economic Logic: Energy, Work, and Embodiment in Postmillennial Fiction. English: Journal of the English Association 2024. In Preparation.
  • Ashbridge C. New northern voices: Black British writing and the devolving politics of prize culture. Journal of Postcolonial Writing 2023, 59(5), 593-606.
  • Ashbridge C, Clarke M, Bell B, Saunston H, Walker E. Democratic Citizenship, Critical Literacy and Educational Policy in England: a Conceptual Paradox?. Cambridge Journal of Education 2021, 52(3), 291-307.
  • Ashbridge C. 'It aye like London, you know': The Brexit Novel and the Cultural Politics of Devolution. Open Library of Humanities 2020, 6(1), 15.

• Authored Book

  • Ashbridge C. Rewriting the North: Contemporary British Fiction and the Cultural Politics of Devolution. London: Routledge, 2023.

• Book Chapters

  • Jackson J, Ashbridge C. The Black City. In: Matthew Beaumont, ed. The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and the City. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. In Preparation.
  • Ashbridge C. Post-British Politics and Sarah Hall's North. In: Alexander Beaumont and Elke D'Hoker, ed. Sarah Hall: Critical Essays. Canterbury: Gylphi, 2022. In Press.
  • Ashbridge C. "All I need is myself": Spatializing Neoliberal Class Consciousness in the Northern Millennial Novel. In: Simon Lee, ed. Locating Classed Subjectivities: Intersections of Space and Working-Class Life in Nineteenth-, Twentieth-, and Twenty-First-Century British Writing. London: Routledge, 2022, pp.206-225.

• Review

  • Ashbridge C. Ecocriticism and Geocriticism: Overlapping Territories in Environmental and Literary Studies by Robert T. Tally Jr and Christine M. Battista (eds.) [Book review]. Literary Geographies 2018, 4(2), 271-274.