Projects per year
Personal profile
Biography
You can find out more about my research interests and projects here
I specialise in young adult fiction and my current project is a study of ordinariness in contemporary British YA. I am the author of Constructing Adolescence in Fantastic Realism (Routledge 2009) and General Editor of The International Journal of Young Adult Literature.
I am also an expert in the practice of remembering and rereading childhood fiction, and my latest monograph, Rereading Childhood Books: a Poetics (Bloomsbury 2019) examined how adults negotiate relationships with books from their pasts.
I enjoy collaboration, and recently led a co-creative project ‘Lifelong Reading: New Stories’, working with a day centre specialising in dementia. I was co-organiser for ‘The Memory Network’, which brought together scholars working in arts and humanities and science. I am now collaborating with schools and young people to create digital YA reading communities for my Covid-19 related project, ‘Reading for Normal.’
I am a member of the National Centre for Research in Children's Literature.
Qualifications
PhD: 'Representing Adolescence in Young Adult Fantastic Realism' (Nottingham Trent, 2005); PGCert: Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (Roehampton/HEA, 2009).
Research interests
Young adult fiction; Memory and literature; Reading and rereading. I would welcome enquiries from research students and collaborators with interests in any of these areas.
Teaching
I teach on both the on-site and distance learning MA programmes in Children's Literature. I teach 'Memory and Being' and 'British Young Adult Fiction' on the undergraduate English curriculum.
I have supervised these PhD projects to completion:
- Nick Cambell: 'Children's Neo-Romanticism: The Archaeological Imagination in Post-War Children's Fantasy.' (2017: minor corrections)
- Erica Gillingham: 'Lesbian Love Stories in Young Adult Literature and Graphic Novels: Narrative Constructions of Same-Sex Relationships between Female Characters across Genre and Form.' (2017: no corrections)
- Anne Malewski: 'Growing Sideways: Shifting Boundaries between CHildhood and Adulthood in Twenty-First Century Britain' (2019: no corrections)
- Sarah Pyke: 'Queer readers remember: The textual and extratextual afterlives of childhood reading for LGBTQ adults' (2019: minor corrections)
- Kay Waddilove: 'Good Enough? Representations of Motherhood in Populist Children's Literature from 1911 to 2011' (2019: no corrections)
I also supervise the following students:
- Emily Corbett: 'Gender-Variant Identities in Twenty-First Century Young Adult Literature'
- Odhran O'Donoghue: 'The ‘Gay Future Child’: an analysis of homonormativity and assimilation in contemporary American LGBT+ young adult fiction'
Links
Projects
- 1 Active
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Reading for Normal: Young People and Fiction in the Time of Covid-19
1/09/20 → 31/08/21
Project: Research
Research Output
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The Art of Being Ordinary: Cups of Tea and Catching the Bus in Contemporary British YA
Waller, A., 2 Nov 2020, In: International Journal of Young Adult Literature. 1, 1Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open AccessFile -
Rereading childhood Books: A Poetics
Waller, A., 7 Feb 2019, London & New York: Bloomsbury. 232 p. (Bloomsbury Perspectives on Children's Literature)Research output: Book/Report › Book › peer-review
Open AccessFile5 Downloads (Pure) -
Margaret Mackey’s One Child Reading: My Auto-Bibliography (review)
Waller, A., 23 Mar 2017, In: Children's Literature in Education. 48, 2Research output: Contribution to journal › Book/Film/Article review
Open AccessFile -
"Re-memorying: A new phenomenological methodology in children’s literature studies"
Waller, A., 1 Oct 2017, The Edinburgh Companion to Children¹s Literature. Beauvais, C. & Nikolajeva, M. (eds.). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, p. 136-149Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter
Open AccessFile28 Downloads (Pure) -
"“Girls Like it Most” Challenging Gendered Canons and Paracanons in the case of The Secret Garden"
Waller, A., 2017, Canon Constitution and Canon Change in Children’s Literature. Kümmerling-Meibauer, B. & Müller, A. (eds.). London: Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group, p. 155-172Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter › peer-review
Open AccessFile14 Downloads (Pure)
Prizes
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British Academy / Leverhulme Small Grant - Rereading Childhood Fiction: Memory & Emotion (£2171)
Waller, Alison (Recipient), Mar 2014
Prize: Prize (including medals and awards)
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Southlands Methodist Trust Small Grant - Lifelong Reading: New Stories (£3000)
Waller, Alison (Recipient), Sep 2019
Prize: Prize (including medals and awards)
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Student Led Teaching Award - Best Research Supervisor
Waller, Alison (Recipient), 2014
Prize: Prize (including medals and awards)
Activities
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Remembering Childhood Books
Alison Waller (Speaker)
12 Feb 2020Activity: Public engagement and outreach › Schools engagement
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Lifelong Reading Workshop
Alison Waller (Organiser)
29 May 2019Activity: Participating in or organising an event › Participation in workshop, seminar, course
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Alison Waller in Conversation with Nathan Waddell
Alison Waller (Interviewee)
12 Feb 2019Activity: Public engagement and outreach › Media article or participation
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EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIES (Journal)
Alison Waller (Editorial board member)
1 Sep 2019Activity: Publication peer-review and editorial work › Editorial Activity
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Digging Down: excavating memories of childhood reading
Alison Waller (Speaker)
20 Jun 2019Activity: Public engagement and outreach › Schools engagement