Dr Nicola Abram

Office

G9

Building location

Edith Morley

Areas of interest

I'm interested in contemporary literature: what it says about the world around us, and how it helps us to imagine and enact social justice, especially racial and gender justice. My research focuses on postcolonial and feminist writings, from 1980 onwards.

My first book, Black British Women’s Theatre: Intersectionality, Archives, Aesthetics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) won the 2021 Society for Theatre Research Book Prize and the University of Reading 2022 Research Output Prize for the Heritage and Creativity theme. Drawing on unpublished materials held in archives of various kinds – from cultural institutions like the Victoria and Albert Museum to individuals’ personal papers – I collate a rich, interconnected and, where necessary, corrective history of Black women in British theatre, from the 1980s to the early 2000s. The book profiles five theatre companies and artists: Theatre of Black Women, Munirah Theatre Company, Black Mime Theatre Women’s Troop, Zindika, and SuAndi. As part of this project I had the pleasure of interviewing many pioneering playwrights and practitioners, including the Booker Prize-winning novelist Bernardine Evaristo. 

In 2025 I ran the first academic symposium on Evaristo’s writing, featuring 15 speakers across two days, as well as the sold-out public event ‘An Evening with Bernardine Evaristo’. I am now editing the first collection of essays exploring Evaristo’s work.

I have also published articles and book chapters on the Black British writers debbie tucker green, Winsome Pinnock, and Helen Oyeyemi, and on Black and Asian British arts collectives and anthologies.

Recently, I have begun a research project investigating literary representations of ‘matrescence’,  the transition to motherhood. As part of this I am working in partnership with the local community group Becoming Mums to run writing for wellbeing workshops for new mums. We ran a series of six workshops in 2024, and produced an anthology of participants’ work, titled Becoming: An Anthology of Creative Motherhood, launched at South Street Arts Centre. In 2026 we are running workshops at Reading Museum, drawing on artworks and artefacts from the Museum collections to prompt participants’ reflections on and writing about motherhood.

Postgraduate supervision

I am currently supervising one PhD candidate, and have seen two successfully through to graduation.  I have supervised PhD research spanning Afrofuturism, British Muslim women's writing, and Sri Lankan diasporic writing, and examined several PhDs on Black British writing and theatre. 

I welcome contact from prospective PhD applicants with proposals relating to contemporary postcolonial, feminist, and/or Black British women’s writing, especially archival and/or publicly engaged research.

Teaching

Within the Department of English Literature I convene the following modules:

I also give lectures and/or lead seminars on other undergraduate modules, including ‘Theories and Practice of Writing’ (Part 1), ‘Contemporary Fiction’ (Part 2), and ‘British Black and Asian Voices’ (Part 3), and on the MA modules ‘Modern and Contemporary Literature’ and ‘Contemporary Literature and Ethnicity’.

I became a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in 2020. In 2019/20 I received the University Teaching Fellowship, a prestigious award recognising an individual’s teaching excellence and contribution to the development of teaching and learning within the University of Reading. The UTF Panel commended my commitment to a diverse curriculum and inclusive teaching, and recognised the impact of my work across the Department and School and across the wider University and sector.

I have worked in partnership with students on a number of funded teaching projects, including a PLanT Project to demystify learning journals (2018/19) and a D&I-funded network for BAME students in English Literature (2019/20). In April 2020 I won the student-nominated Reading University Students’ Union Excellence Award for Technology Enhanced Learning, for the project ‘A Thousand Words: Student Life Through a Lens’.

I enjoy teaching in a range of contexts. I have delivered outreach sessions for school and college students, and run training for secondary school teachers, and I have previously led a reading group in a high security women's prison.

Research centres and groups

Since 2023 I have led the 'Diversity and Inclusion' research theme in the Department of English Literature at the University of Reading, which gathers staff and postgraduate researchers working across a range of historical periods and literary forms. Prior to this (2019-2023) I convened the ‘Identities’ research cluster.

From 2014-2017 I was Vice-Chair of the international and interdisciplinary Postcolonial Studies Association (PSA), and from 2011-2014 I served as co-editor of its newsletter. I continue to enjoy active membership of the PSA and The British Association of Contemporary Literary Studies.

Selected publications

My publications include:

(2024) ‘“Being / together”: Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other and the Black British Women’s Movement’, Contemporary Women's Writing, vol. 18

(2020) Black British Women's Theatre: Intersectionality, Archives, Aesthetics (Palgrave Macmillan)

(2020) ‘Forging connections: anthologies, arts collectives, and the politics of inclusion’ in The Cambridge History of Black and Asian British Writing, eds Susheila Nasta and Mark Stein (Cambridge University Press), pp. 403-416

(2017) 'Sensory signification in Juniper's Whitening and Victimese', in 'Telling it Slant': Critical Approaches to Helen Oyeyemi, eds Chloe Buckley and Sarah Ilott (Sussex Academic Press), pp.93-112

(2014) 'Staging the unsayable: debbie tucker green's political theatre', Journal of Contemporary Drama in English, 2.1, 113-130

(2014) 'Looking Back: Winsome Pinnock's Politics of Representation', in Modern and Contemporary Black British Theatre, eds Mary Brewer, Lynette Goddard and Deirdre Osborne (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), pp.95-111

 

PRESENTATIONS

Invited and keynote presentations include:

(2024) Keynote presentation at Recentring Form(s) in and of the Margins: The Politics of Self-Reflexivity, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium

(2016) Invited talk at Ethics, Affect, Responsibility: Global Citizenship and the Act of Reading, British Academy/University of Bristol

(2015) Invited talk at Representing race and black Britain in theatre, film, television and digital media symposium, National Theatre, London

(2013) Invited talk at Black British Women's Writing: Where Is It Now?, an International Expert Meeting, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium

 

PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT

My public engagement activities include:

(2026) Co-organiser of Maternal Mental Health and The Arts conference, with Becoming Mums.

(2021) Invited speaker at Coming Together, Growing Together – A Celebration of Black British Women in Theatre, Clapham Library, London

(2016) Co-organiser of 2nd Uhuru International Black Film Festival, University of Reading, with Unity Arts, Music & Multimedia

(2014) Invited speaker at public Black History Month celebration, The Globe, Reading

(2014) Radio guest on BBC Radio Berkshire African Caribbean Community Show hosted by Jeanette Kwakye

(2012) Contributor to documentary film Margins to Mainstream: The Story of Black Theatre in Britain (Octavia Foundation/Nu Century Arts)

  

Website

For fuller information on my research, public engagement, and teaching activities please visit my website.

Publications

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