FEATURED AUTHOR

Bill Ashcroft

Professor
UNSW

Since launching the field with the publication of The Empire Writes Back in 1989 I have focused primarily on postcolonial studies, with a particular interest in linguistic and cultural transformation, which looks beyond a simple oppositional decolonising rhetoric to celebrate the agency of postcolonial subjects. My latest work Utopianism in Postcolonial Literatures brings together two otherwise unrelated discourses in my latest attempt to stretch the boundaries of the field.

Subjects: Literature

Biography

I was born and grew up in Sydney’s Eastern beaches and received my first two degrees at Sydney University. After gaining my PhD at the Australian National University i worked as a Research Fellow at ANU, lectured at McAuley Teachers College Brisbane, worked as a researcher for the National Aboriginal Conference and the Parliamentary library and lectured at the University of Papua New Guinea until my appointment at the University of NSW in 1988 where I have worked ever since. In 2001 I won an Innovative Teaching and Educational Technology fellowship at UNSW and have maintained an interest in innovative teaching. In 2005 I was appointed Chair Professor in the School of English at the University of Hong Kong where I taught until 2008. In 2010, having returned to UNSW I won a five year ARC Professorial Fellowship, completed in 2015. My research has focused on Australian Literary Studies and Postcolonial Studies of which I am a founding exponent. My focus on postcolonial studies has emphasized language transformation, and most recently the alliances between postcolonial theory and globalization, transnationalism and utopianism.

Areas of Research / Professional Expertise

Personal Interests

Books

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