Postgraduate Recruitment Manager, Student Recruitment Team, Marketing, Recruitment, Admissions and Outreach Team, University of York
Tom has a decade of experience of working in a variety of roles at institutions of Higher Education in France, England, and Northern Ireland. He has worked in classroom settings (teaching French and English language and literature), in student recruitment (working with both international and UK students), and advice and advocacy. He is happy to be a point of contact to prospective students interested in any discipline, but his expertise lies in contemporary African literature, postcolonial and decolonial theory (especially the thought of Achille Mbembe), representations of masculinity and mental health, and intermediality.
Tom defended an AHRC-funded (Northern Bridge DTP) doctorate at Queen’s University Belfast in 2021. His thesis – supervised by Profs. Maeve McCusker and Debbie Lisle and examined by Profs. Margaret Topping and Charles Forsdick – applied a decolonial theoretical framework to examine how contemporary African authors such as Léonora Miano, A. A. Waberi, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie creatively engage with the racial politics of the Black Atlantic from a contemporary, decolonial, and African perspective. In addition to examining how such authors use innovative literary and intermedial techniques to creatively engage with this storied oceanic margin, his research also examined the opportunities and shortfalls of the ‘decolonial turn’. Tom has published his research in peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes and is working on turning his thesis into a monograph. Having lived and studied abroad, he is a fluent speaker of French and English, and is also highly proficient in Spanish and Russian.
He currently works in the student recruitment team at the University of York, where he is responsible for supporting and guiding people who are interested in both Masters and PhD study. In this role, he is responsible for working to widen participation in PG study. In this capacity, he has been involved in projects such as the Decolonising Campus and Curriculum group at York. He is also interested in using a data-led approach to promote and support postgraduate applicants from diverse backgrounds.
Recent Publications
202x [Monograph (work in progress)] currently editing PhD thesis for publication.
2019 [Article] « La masculinité à travers l’Atlantique : Enjeux identitaires et musicaux dans Crépuscule du tourment I et Crépuscule du tourment II de Léonora Miano », in Etudes littéraires africaines, no. 47, 2019, pp. 147-162
2019 [Chapter] « L’échange atlantique revisité : Pelourinho et Les coqs cubains chantent à minuit de Tierno Monénembo », in Yao, Jean-Arsène and Zoungbo, Victorien Lavou [Eds.], Afriques et Amériques: Allers-retours, réévaluations et perspectives actuelles, Prensa de la Universidad de Alcalá, 2019, ISBN9788416978892, pp. 103-109
2018 [Article] “George Lowden: Profile and Interview”, in Turf & Grain: Makers, no. 4, June 2018, pp. 96-103
2014 [Book review] “Thomas, Dominic: Africa and France: Postcolonial cultures, migration and racism, Indiana University Press: Bloomington IN, 2013”, in Leeds African Studies Bulletin, no. 76, Winter 2014-15, pp. 95-97
2013 [Article] « L’Histoire, l’aujourd’hui et l’avenir de la Bibliothèque nationale de Guinée », in 3P+, April 2013, pp. 15-19
