Research
area
My research explores how contemporary fiction of the African diaspora enables new ways of conceiving the relationship between race, embodiment and literature. I am especially interested in how literature intervenes in Black feminist discourse and concerns in a range of texts by African, Black British, and Anglophone Caribbean women writers.
Research projects
Black Health and the Humanities
2020-2022
I worked alongside the Principal Investigator Dr. Josie Gill to develop the project, funded by a £200,000 Wellcome Trust Discretionary Award.
I designed an interdisciplinary training programme for twenty PhD students and ECRs, consisting of online workshops where participants learned from leading academics in healthcare, law, geography, literature and the arts, academics and activists.
One output involved developing a digital database of resources about Black health. I was responsible for budget management, website development, social medial management, project administration, and maintaining the social cohesion of the network.
The network was invaluable to a new generation of scholars; it helped them to succeed in their academic careers and fostered research collaborations. The network is now hosted by the University of Durham.
Selected publications
Monograph
Radical Bodies: Reimagining Solidarity in Contemporary Black Feminist Fiction shows how literature contributes to building solidarity in neoliberal times by analysing novels and short stories by authors leading the discourse about global Black feminism: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dionne Brand, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Bernardine Evaristo, Nalo Hopkinson and Zadie Smith. My book argues that Black feminist writers use bodily relations to expose the difficulties and potential of solidarity across class, political, racial and national lines.
Journal article
Lascelles, Amber. (2024). "The Dancing Women Move Forward": Embodied Agency and Black Feminist Solidarity in Tsitsi Dangarembga's This Mournable Body. Feminist Formations, 36(3), 84-103.
Journal article
Lascelles, A., & Swaby, N. A. (2023). Black feminist texts, presences, methods: a dialogue. Feminist Review, 135(1), 98-112.