Danielle Sands

Danielle Sands

Dr, Senior Lecturer in Comparative Literature and Culture

  • TW20 0EX

Personal profile

Research interests

I joined Languages, Literatures and Cultures in September 2015 after a year as Lecturer in Philosophy in the Department of Politics and International Relations. From 2019-2022, I was Director of Postgraduation Education (Research) for the School of Humanities. I am currently Deputy Director of the Techne Doctoral Training Partnership.  

My research is interdisciplinary, crossing literary studies, philosophy, and critical theory. My research interests include: literary and critical theory, 20th and 21st century fiction, post-Kantian European philosophy, philosophy of religion, posthumanism, philosophy and literature, aesthetics, animal studies, and environmental ethics. I am interested in supervising MA by Research or PhD dissertations in any of these areas, and in 2020 was runner up in Royal Holloway's Doctoral Supervisor of the Year competition. 

My first monograph, Animal Writing: Storytelling, Selfhood and the Limits of Empathy, was published by EUP in 2019. I am the editor of Philosophy and the Human Paradox (Routledge 2020) and Bioethics and the Posthumanities (Routledge 2022). My second monograph, Writing Religion, Politics and Life after Derrida, will be published by Bloomsbury. 

In 2018, I received a British Academy Rising Star Engagement Award for the project 'Posthumanities: Redefining Humanities for the Fourth Industrial Age,' which ran from 2018-9. For 2020-2, I was the Co-I on the AHRC-funded network 'The Philosophical Life of Plants,' and am currently working on an edited volume emerging from this project. I am co-editor of the 'Posthumanism in Practice' series at Bloomsbury. 

Teaching

ML1203 Reading Texts: Criticism for Comparative Literature
LA1000 Liberal Arts 1: Cultural Encounters
ML2207 Critical Worlds: Theory for Comparative Literature
ML3212 Humans and Other Animals in Twenty-First Century Fiction and Thought
ML5002 Critical Theories and Methodologies

Educational background

BA(Hons) Durham
MSc Edinburgh
PhD London

Affiliations

Fellow, Higher Education Academy
Executive Committee Member, Society for European Philosophy
Editorial Board Member, 'New Comparative Criticism' series, Peter Lang
Member, British Comparative Literature Association
Member, American Comparative Literature Association
Member, British Association for Comparative Literary StudiesMember, Association for the Study of Literature and Environment

Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years

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