Speaker details

Biography

Stephanie is a Professor of Literature and Law in the English Department at the University of Southampton. She holds a BA and an LLB from the Australian National University, and a PhD from Cambridge. Stephanie teaches postcolonial literature, often in the context of legal histories, debates and theories. She also teaches intellectual property law and histories of censorship as they bear upon literary cultures. Her research focuses on various forms of writing—from short poems to long legal treatises—about oceans, seas and coasts. Stephanie is a director of the Intelligent Oceans Doctoral Training Programme, and supervises PhD students working on discourses about immigration, asylum, displacement, and ocean governance. She is also a director of the Southampton Institute for Arts and Humanities: in this role, she supports socially engaged research and innovative research methods, often in partnership with local policy actors and community groups. In this capacity, she is currently working with colleagues from the Universities of Hull, Liverpool, Glasgow, Aberystwyth and Leeds and a wide range of national, regional and local organisations to build a community of practice for Resilient UK Coastal Communities and Seas (a UKRI/DEFRA funded research programme running from 2024 to 2028).