I am Reader in English, teaching and researching mainly in the areas of twentieth and twenty-first century literature, with a particular interest in postcolonial literature and theory, especially pertaining to South Asia and its diasporas.

After completing my PhD at the University of Sussex, I taught at Sussex, Leeds and Worcester before ending up at UEL in 1998. Although I mainly focus on literature, my work is informed by adjacent disciplines, such as cultural and media studies and their attendant theories. In particular I am interested in matters of narrative and power, and my research broadly addresses the question of how narrative and representational forms are complicit with (and how they contest and problematise) established power relations.

I particularly welcome applications from potential research students wishing to work on the politics of representation in literature and culture since 9/11, or contemporary literature more generally.

• Contemporary literature - especially colonial and postcolonial literature and theory (with a particular focus on Soputh Asia and its diaspora).
• Fiction since 9/11.
• Theories of World Literature.
• Political and cultural discourses about Muslims, media representations and debates about multiculturalism.

• English

• Ways of Reading: Criticism and Critical Theory
• Modernity, Literature and Culture; Origins of the Novel
• Postmodernist Fiction
• Postcolonial Writing; PhD supervision.

I work on questions of narrative, representation and power. My current research is on the representation of Muslims in contemporary polititical and cultural discourses. I have been the Principal Investigator in an AHRC-funded international Research Network entitled Framing Muslims, on representational tropes in contemporary discourses on Muslims. Events have included workshops and seminars, featuring internationally renowned participants such as Tariq Ramadan, Ziauddin Sardar, Tariq Modood, Pnina Werbner and Haideh Moghissi. There is also an interactive website: www.framingmuslims.org.

Among its outcomes the project has yielded a special issue of the postcolonial journal Interventions entitled ‘Muslims in the Frame’ (Vol. 12, No. 2, July 2010) including a jointly authored introduction and one of my own essays: ‘Terrorvision: Race, Nation and Muslimness in Fox’s 24’.

I have also completed a monograph – co-authored with Dr Amina Yaqin - entitled, Framing Muslims: Stereotyping and Representation from 9/11 to 7/7, (forthcoming with Harvard University Press in 2011) . I am also co-editing a book on fiction by writers from a Muslim cultural background, to be entitled, Writing Muslims.

Monographs, Edited Volumes

• Critical monograph: Framing Muslims: Stereotyping and Representation from 9/11 to 7/7, Harvard University Press (forthcoming 2010) – co-authored with Dr Amina Yaqin.
• Critical monograph: Rohinton Mistry (Contemporary World Writers Series), Manchester University Press, 2004 (ISBN 0 7190 6715 4)
• Critical monograph: Fictions of India: Narrative and Power, Edinburgh University Press, 2000 (ISBN 0 7486 1181 9).
• Edited volume entitled: Alternative Indias: Writing, Nation and Communalism (with Dr Alex Tickell) Rodopi, Amsterdam, 2006 (ISBN 90 420 1927 1)

Articles and Chapters

• Essay entitled 'Framing Muslims in British Television Drama' in Gerald Maclean (ed.) Britain and the Muslim World: Historical Perspectives (cambridge Scholars press, forthcoming 2011)
• Journal article: ‘Strangers and Stereotypes: the Spooks Controversy and the Framing of Muslims’, in ‘Beyond the Law: Postcolonial Writing, Legality and Legitimacy’, special issue of the Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 46:5 (2010).
• Chapter on ‘Salman Rushdie and the English Tradition’, in Abdulrazak Gurnah (ed.) Cambridge Companion to Salman Rushdie (Cambridge University Press 2007) (ISBN: 052160995X)
• Chapter on ‘Postcolonial Forster’, in David Bradshaw (ed.) Cambridge Companion to E. M. Forster (Cambridge University Press, 2007) (ISBN 0521 834759)
• Essay entitled, ‘Tunnels and Bridges: Narrative and Power in Two Novels of India’, in Roopa Srinivasan, Manish Tiwari and Sandeep Silas (eds.) Our Indian Railway:Themes in India’s Railway History (New Delhi, Foundation Books, 2006 (ISBN 8175963301)
• Journal article: ‘Running Repairs: Corruption, Community and Duty in Family Matters’, Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 38:2, 2003.
• Chapters on ‘Colonial Discourse, Postcolonial Theory’ in Kate McGowan (ed.) The Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory Vols. 10, 11, 12 (Oxford University Press, 2002, 2003, 2004) co-authored with James Proctor. (ISBN 0 19 852744 6).
• Chapters on 'Raj Fiction' in The Annotated Bibliography for English Studies (Swets and Zeitlinger) 1997-2000, and on Rohinton Mistry ’2005.
• Review essay entitled: ‘The Space to Speak: Authority, Authenticity and the South Asian Diaspora’, Wasafiri No. 35, Spring 2002. (ISSN 0269 0055), pp. 57-60.
• Article entitled ‘Terrible Beautification: The Body Politics of Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance’, in Unhinging Hinglish: Language and the Politics of Fiction in English from the Indian Subcontinent (Special Issue of Angles on the English Speaking World, Vol. 1, April 2001, University of Copenhagen) (ISSN 0903 1723), pp. 75-88.
• Chapter entitled 'Gothic and Supernatural: Allegories at Work and at Play in Kipling's Indian Fiction', in Julian Wolfreys and Ruth Robbins (eds.) Victorian Gothic (Macmillan, 2000) (ISBN 0 333 74935 9), pp. 201-217

• Arts and Humanities Research Council – Peer Review College Member (Oct 2007-Present)
• Open University Postcolonial Literatures Research Group (Associate Member)

• www.framingmuslims.org