Jayde Martin

• BA (Hons) American and Canadian Studies with English Literature, University of Birmingham (First Class)
• MA,  Literature and Culture, University of Birmingham (Merit) 

My educational journey started in North Wales. I moved to the University of Birmingham for my Undergraduate Degree and never left. It is a testament to the quality of the English Department, its staff, and their brilliant research and teaching skills!

I taught first year undergraduates on the Prose 2 module in the second semester. This module taught the students a breadth of key prose texts from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe right through to Time Lived, Without Its Flow by Denise Riley. I taught two seminar groups which amounted to 4 hours active teaching per week with preparation work and assignment marking involved in my payment.

Luckily, my teaching was not disrupted by Covid-19, the last four seminars were taught online.

My research examines representations of the evolution of the ‘next human’ contemporary science-fiction literature. I focus on three key authors of popular science-fiction trilogies between 1987-2018: Octavia Butler, Nancy Kress, and Margaret Atwood. The project analyses how the representation of genetic change complicates or changes species identity. Species identity consists of symbiogenesis between species, tribal essentialism, and hybridity. My research intersects with Posthumanism through my analysis of the representation of post-human species and their relationships to humans and their environment. I have a special interest in the ways in which non-human, subhuman, inhuman, human, transhuman, and posthuman creatures are represented in popular science-fiction, gothic, and horror genres.

My related areas of interest are medical humanities, genre fiction, popular fiction, postcolonial studies, disability studies, gender and sexuality studies, museology, and object orientated research

• In 2016 I worked on a research project in the University of Birmingham’s archives for LGBTQIA+ History Month, it was called the ‘Rainbow Trail’ and orchestrated by Dr Kate Nichols
• I presented the paper ‘Models, Myths and Medicine: the bias of biological sciences’ at the 7^th annual R.O.L.E.S Sexuality and Gender Conference
• I organized the R.O.L.E.S Sexuality and Gender Conference in 2017. During this conference we aimed to examine the role of sex work within wider culture with Gemma Commane. In 2018 we put Jess Philips in conversation Emma Foster as our Keynote panel with the aim of changing policy makers decisions based on academic research
• I am a member of the British Society for Literature and Science
• I travelled to Canada to research in the Margaret Atwood Archive, University of Toronto
• I have received £200 from the Centre for Digital Cultures to host the event ‘Speculative Environments’ and worked as their Postgraduate Research Assistant
• I helped to found and currently sit on the committee for the Midlands Network of Popular Culture. My position within the committee is in the Co-Financial Management and Internal Administration role
• I founded and currently am the Co-Director of the Central Posthumanism Research Network. We were awarded £900 for our PGR Posthumanism Lecture Series from the Midlands 4 Cities DTP consortium
• I was the Co-General Editor for Ad Alta: The Birmingham Journal for Literature for the year 2019-2020, my volume XI can be found here
• I have been awarded the Associate Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy