Jason Allen-Paisant

Senior Lecturer in Critical Theory & Creative Writing

I am Senior Lecturer in Critical Theory and Creative Writing in the Department of English, American Studies, and Creative Writing.

I am alumnus of the University of Oxford, from which I earned a doctorate in Medieval and Modern Languages, having also studied at the École normale supérieure (UIm) in France and at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica, my home country.

I'm the author of Théâtre dialectique postcolonial (Classiques Garnier), and of Engagements with Aimé Césaire (Oxford University Press, 2023), which is a philosophical study of poetry from the perspective of African metaphysics. I'm also the author of two volumes of poetry — Thinking with Trees (winner of the Poetry category of the 2022 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature) and Self-Portrait as Othello, both published by Carcanet Press.

My creative nonfiction book Scanning the Bush will be published by Hutchinson Heinemann in 2024. I’ve twice been guest editor of special issues of scholarly journals: Performing Black Futures and Face à l’histoire coloniale (the latter co-edited with Clare Finburgh Delijani), for parallax and Théâtre/Public respectively. My work has also resulted in numerous peer-reviewed articles in scholarly journals and in creative/critical writings for various magazines, including Granta.

Among other matters, my work explores embodied experience in the context of Afro-diasporic politics and worldbuilding, often reflecting on the complex meanings of nature in Black life.

I welcome enquires from prospective doctoral candidates whose research sits at the intersection of critical theory and creative writing.