Lead organisers
Rahiela Seef
Rahiela Seef (she/her) is an M4C funded PhD candidate at Nottingham Trent University. Her doctoral thesis, entitled “‘Like Surah, Like Song’: The Poetics of Faith, Femininity and Orality across the East African Diaspora,” analyses representations of faith, Black womanhood and female defiance in diaspora Sudanese and Somali poetry. Drawing connections between the collections in theme, rhythm and form, Rahiela will explore the blend of African, Islamic and contemporary Black oral traditions expressed within the poems, making a case for a shared literary canon in which diasporic East African women’s writing resides. Her research interests include Black feminist literature, intersectional feminist theory, and contemporary spoken word poetry.
Ramisha Rafique
Ramisha Rafique is a NTU Vice Chancellor Bursary funded PhD candidate at Nottingham Trent University. Her research interests include Flânerie, British Muslim women’s writing, and Islamophobia. Ramisha has been published by The Journal of Postcolonial Writing (2023), Literary Encyclopaedia (2023), and NTU Research Blog (2023). Her poetry has featured in Bystander (Laundrette Books, 2017), the NTU Postcolonial Studied Centre website (2021), and The Journal of Postcolonial Writing (2023). Ramisha has an upcoming publication alongside Jenni Ramone titled ‘#HandsOffMyHijab: Muslim women writers challenge contemporary Islamophobia’, in The Palgrave Handbook to Gendered Islamophobia (2024).
Team members
Victoria Callus
Victoria Zoe Callus (she/they) is a UK-based Maltese writer and final-year creative-critical Midlands4Cities PhD candidate. Her thesis, titled ‘Paper Cuts: Examining Paper Affect in Contemporary Experimental Literature’, focuses on paper materiality and the relationship between printed texts and their surface through a study of paper cuts, inserts, and folds. Victoria’s creative work builds this research into the context of her multicultural and multilingual Maltese heritage to examine the tangible after-effects of coloniality on the Maltese microculture.
Dr Trang Dang
Trang completed a PhD in Arts and Humanities from Nottingham Trent University and previously graduated from Oxford Brookes University with a BA and an MA in English Literature. Fully funded by the Vice Chancellor’s Studentship scheme, her PhD project focuses on Jeff VanderMeer’s eco weird fiction, exploring narratives of dark ecology and co-existence between humans and nonhumans through the lenses of object-oriented philosophy and the Anthropocene discourse. She has published on the topics of animal studies, American contemporary culture, contemporary critical theory on the Anthropocene, and queer ecology. More of Trang’s work is available here. Currently, she works as a Communications Coordinator at the Climate Psychology Alliance UK.
Semanur Darbaz
Semanur Darbaz (she/her) is a PhD researcher in museum studies at Nottingham Trent University, funded by NTU’s Cultural Heritage Peak Studentship Scheme. She holds an MSc in Migration Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. In her doctoral project, Semanur focuses on the representation of migrants in Turkish museums, as well as investigating the role of museums as spaces for fostering social cohesion. As a part of her interdisciplinary approach, Semanur is organising participatory workshops with individuals belonging to refugee, asylum-seeking, or migrant backgrounds. Her research involves evaluating their engagement with museum space in terms of identity and belonging.
Melanie Welaratne
Melanie is a Scholar activist whose focus and passion centre on race equity, intersectionality and decoloniality within Higher Education. She is currently an Educational Developer for Nottingham Trent University. Her work focuses on supporting academic and professional service staff across NTU to address disparities in student attainment, progression and outcomes through equitable learning and teaching approaches.
Talking Back Conference 