Prof Katherine Baxter

My main areas of research are colonial and postcolonial literatures and the works of Joseph Conrad. 

My current research examines representations of Arab transnationalism in the late colonial period. This research brings together various strands of my prior research in African Literatures, Joseph Conrad and WW1 in the Middle East. An early product of this research is my contribution to Migration, Modernity and Transnationalim in the Work of Joseph Conrad (eds Kim Salmons and Tania Zulli, Bloomsbury 2021) 'Arab and Muslim Transnationalism in Conrad's Malay Fiction'.

My most recent monograph, Imagined States: Law and Literature in Nigeria (in the Edinburgh Critical Studies in Law, Literature and the Humanities series, 2019), examines representations of the law in British and Nigerian high-brow, middle-brow and popular fiction and journalism. Drawing on a range of examples, the book focuses on the imaginative role that the state of exception played in the application of indirect rule during British colonialism and in the legal machinations of the postcolonial state. It reads works by Chinua Achebe, Joyce Cary, Cyprian Ekwensi and Edgar Wallace, together with a range of Nigerian market literature and journalism.

I have published widely in Conrad studies. My monograph, Joseph Conrad and The Swan Song of Romance (Ashgate 2010), explores Conrad’s use of classical romance forms throughout his oeuvre and received ‘Honourable Mention’ for the Adam Gillon Book Award, 2012. I have edited a variety of essay collections and special issues, most recently editing Conrad and Language with Professor Robert Hampson (EUP 2016; paperback 2017; awarded third prize for the Adam Gillon Book Award, 2018). I am co-editor of Conrad’s Plays for Cambridge University Press’s series, The Works of Joseph Conrad, with Professor Richard Hand (CUP forthcoming). This is an exciting project, which collects together for the first time all Conrad’s plays with The Book of Job, his only literary translation from Polish, and his film scenario, Gaspar The Strongman.

I am also involved in research on the First World War, co-editing the Edinburgh Companion to the First World War in the Arts with Dr Ann-Marie Einhaus, (EUP 2017). In 2018 I ran an international workshop, ‘Creative Practice and Cultural Memory: Exploring First World War Heritage in the Middle East’ at the British Institute in Amman, Jordan bringing together artists, historians, writers and museum curators to discuss creative responses to the First World War in the Middle East and its inheritance today. Previously, Ann-Marie Einhaus and I have also collaborated on a Heritage Lottery-funded project, ‘Reflections of Newcastle, 1914-1918’ (£55,200) with the Literary and Philosophical Society, Newcastle College and the November Club.  

I am a member of the AHRC Peer Review College and of the AHRC’s GCRF Peer Review College. I act as an expert reviewer for a number of academic publishers and journals and between 2016-2020 I was General Editor of English: The Journal of the English Association.

• Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
• Arab and Muslim Transnationalism in Conrad's Malay Fiction, Baxter, K. 26 Aug 2021, Migration, Modernity and Transnationalism in the Work of Joseph Conrad, Bloomsbury
• Practices of Remembrance: The Experiences of Artists and Curators in the Centenary Commemoration of World War I, Baxter, K. 13 May 2020, In: Arts
• The "Reasonable Man" in Colonial Nigeria, Baxter, K. 6 Mar 2020, In: Open Library of Humanities
• Imagined States: Law and Literature in Nigeria, 1900-1966, Baxter, K. Nov 2019
• Conrad and Language, Baxter, K., Hampson, R. Jun 2016
• Writing in Translation: Robert Sullivan’s 'Star Waka' and Craig Santos Perez’s 'from unincorporated territory', Baxter, K., Smith, L. 1 Dec 2016, In: Literary Geographies
• ‘Senseless speech’ and inaudibility in Conrad's ‘Amy Foster’: rethinking trauma and the unspeakable in fiction, Baxter, K. 19 Oct 2015, In: Textual Practice
• Reading New Black Fiction of South East Asia: An ex-centric approach to transnational literary studies, Baxter, K. 2013, In: The Journal of Commonwealth Literature
• Memory and photography: Rethinking postcolonial trauma studies, Baxter, K. 1 Feb 2011, In: Journal of Postcolonial Writing
• Joseph Conrad and the Swan Song of Romance, Baxter, K. Jan 2010

• Hannah Humes Politics, Religion and Pleasure: Travel Writing about China in the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle, 1880-1925 Start Date: 07/10/2014 End Date: 07/11/2018
• Eman Alasah Doctor of philosophy in English literature and creative writing Colonial encounters and liminal spaces in post-Oslo Palestinian life writing Start Date: 18/01/2021
• Hayet Sedda Identity and Cultural Anxieties: Will to Power in Early Twentieth-Century Women’s Travel Writing about the Middle East and North Africa Start Date: 01/03/2020
• James Ward Domestic Space in the Colonial Fiction of Joseph Conrad and his contemporaries Start Date: 01/10/2018 End Date: 16/10/2021
• Hayet Sedda Identity and Cultural Anxieties: Will to Power in Early Twentieth-Century Women’s Travel Writing about the Middle East and North Africa Start Date: 01/03/2020 End Date: 16/10/2021
• James Ward Domestic Space in the Colonial Fiction of Joseph Conrad and his Contemporaries (1890–1920) Start Date: 01/10/2018 End Date: 11/05/2023
• Eman Alasah Doctor of philosophy in English literature and creative writing Colonial encounters and liminal spaces in post-Oslo Palestinian life writing Start Date: 18/01/2021 End Date: 16/10/2021

• Literary Studies PhD June 30 2003
• MA (Hons) June 30 1999
• Senior Fellow (SFHEA) Higher Education Academy (HEA) 2017