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Dr Penny Newell

Positions held:
  • Lecturer in Creative and Critical Writing, School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication
  • Overview

    Overview

    Biography

    Penny Newell (they/them) is a Lecturer in Creative and Critical Writing at Birkbeck. Penny is the Programme Director of the BA in Creative Writing and English and is open to all queries relating to this degree.

    Penny writes across form and genre. Their poetry has been published in Poetry Review, Magma, 3:AM, Hobart, Portland Review (Pushcart Prize nominated), and was awarded a Northern Writers Award in 2019. Their academic essays have been published with Social Text, Performance Research, and Palgrave Macmillan, amongst others. They have written on commission for BBC Radio 6 and in collaboration for Somerset House, Lakes Culture, and B-Side Festival. Penny was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize in Flash Fiction in 2023.

    Penny completed a BA in English in 2012 (King's College London), a Masters in Philosophy in 2014 (King's College London) and PhD in English Research in 2018 (King's College London). Penny has taught at Leeds Arts University in Creative Writing, at King's College London in Performance Studies, and on interdisciplinary research at Syracuse University, London. 

    Penny's work exists at the boundary between philosophy and literary studies. Their PhD explored working concepts of clouds in ecological thinking, tracking this disparate field of study across Aristotelian, Nietzschean and Deleuzian philosophy, in architectural theory and theories of perspective in visual art, in structuralism and poststructuralism, and in the stage mechanics of Early Modern performance. Penny is particularly interested in methods such as anti-philosophy and genealogy within a history of ideas. Penny is currently researching the financialisation of the ecological crisis. This work intersects with a collaboration with a nationally-acclaimed dance company on the question of eco-anxiety, botany, and the politics of plant taxonomy. This project will continue through 2025.

    Penny is currently supervising a PhD (second supervisor) on "Geopoetics and Denial of Justice in Ammonia-Related Disasters", within literary studies.

    Penny is a member of the British Academy London Early Career Researcher Network and the Theatre & Performance Research Centre at Birkbeck.

    Highlights

  • Supervision and teaching

    Supervision and teaching

    Supervision

    Penny is currently supervising a PhD (second supervisor) on "Geopoetics and Denial of Justice in Ammonia-Related Disasters"

    Teaching

    Penny teaches across literary studies, creative writing, and critical theory. 

    Teaching modules

    • The Creative Critical Seam (AREN221S6)
    • Writing The Self (AREN238S7)
    • Production of the Human: Decolonising the Canon (AREN257S4)
    • Writing and Reading Seminar (ENHU036S7)