Role
Phil Leonard is Professor of Literature and Theory.
Research areas
Professor Leonard's research addresses literary and philosophical approaches to global and world cultures, technology, and sustainability. He is author of Literature after Globalization: Textuality, Technology, and the Nation-State (Bloomsbury, 2013; Choice Outstanding Academic title) and co-editor of 'Troubling Globalization, special issue of Parallax (with Ellie Byrne & Liam Connell, 2021), Telepoetics: Writing the Phone in Literature, Culture, and Theory (with Sarah Jackson & Annabel Williams, Edinburgh University Press, 2026), and The World in Theory: Rethinking Globalization through Derrida and Nancy (with Birgit Kaiser & Laurens ten Kate, Edinburgh University Press, 2026).
Since working on Orbital Poetics: Literature, Theory, World (Bloomsbury, 2019), his research has increasingly addressed the intersection of planetary and space cultures. Orbital Poetics explores conceptions of the world through literary and philosophical writing on satellite technologies, Earth observation from orbit, and constructions of planetary identity/ies. This book is freely available as an Open Access monograph here. His current work explores the emerging interdisciplinary field of space environmentalism, focusing on sustainability issues arising from ambitions to establish habitats beyond Earth. As part of this project, he is writing Astroecologies: Cultural Narratives and Environmental Sustainability.
Current and previous Doctoral projects supervised include:
- Richard Bromhall, Neoliberalism, Class and Resistance in writing in Britain since 2008
- Victoria Callus, Paper Cuts: Investigating Paper Affect in Contemporary Experimental
Literature - Lynda Clark, That's not how it should end: the effect of reader/player responses on the development of narrative
- Trang Dang, Ecological Awareness in Jeff VanderMeer’s New Weird Fiction
- Helena Hunter, Algae ecologies: scale, temporality and modes of address in contemporary Anthropocene poetry
- Thomas Mantzaris, Visuality in Contemporary American Fiction
- Syed Mizbahuddeen Peeran, Postcolonial Biopolitics: Birth, Creation, and the Posthuman in Indian English Science Fiction
- Eleanor Moselle, Unearthly Ecologies: Exploring Environmentalism and Sustainability Beyond Earth Through Literature and Culture
- Kai Northcott, Further from Reality: Exploring the Teleology of Dissociation in Contemporary Fiction
- Melissa Roddis, Amalgamated Subjects: New Dialogues in Posthumanism, Ecocriticism, and Contemporary Literature
- Iain Spillman, 'The Flashing and Fading of Consciousness in Perception': The Fictional Freud in Literature and Theory
Professor Leonard welcomes the opportunity to supervise PhD students in any area that relates to his research. Information about NTU's fully-funded PhD Studentship scheme is available here.
External activity
Professor Leonard was NTU Site Director for the AHRC Midlands4Cities Doctoral Training Partnership from 2013 to 2022. Further details about M4C research can be found on the M4C website.
He has acted as a referee for a large number of journals, including Theory, Culture & Society, Angelaki, Interventions, Body & Society, and Space and Culture. He has reviewed manuscripts and proposals for Palgrave Macmillan, Routledge, Blackwell, Bloomsbury, and Liverpool University Press.
Professor Leonard is a member of the AHRC Peer Review College and has acted as evaluator and panel member for Portugal's Foundation for Science and Technology.
From 2019-2023 he was Chair, and from 2023-2025 Co-Chair, of the British Association for Contemporary Literary Studies (BACLS).
Sponsors and collaborators
Current and former sponsors and partners include:
- Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
- AHRC Midlands4Cities Doctoral Training Partnership
- Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
- British Academy/Leverhulme
- Manchester Metropolitan University
- Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature
- University of Humanistic Studies, Utrecht, the Netherlands
Publications
'Troubling Globalization', special issue of Parallax 27:1 (2021)
'Sacred Shores?', Parallax 27:1 (2021)
Orbital Poetics: Literature, Theory, World Leonard, P, 2019, Bloomsbury
Making sense of the world: literature and globalisation Leonard, P, 2018, in Berthold Schoene & Eileen Pollard (eds), British LIterature in Transition, 1980-2000, Cambridge University Press
Message to the Gods: The Space Poetry that Transcends Human Rivalries Leonard, P. 2018. The Conversation
The global and the neoliberal: Indra Sinha’s Animal’s people, from human community to zones of indistinction Leonard, P. 2016, in Jenni Ramone (ed) Postcolonial texts: new contexts, new narratives, new debates, Bloomsbury
Digital Literary Production and the Humanities Leonard, P. & Rapatzikou, T.GRAMMA: Journal of Theory & Criticism, 2015, 23
Mundane Globalism Leonard, P. 2015. American Book Review, 36 (5)
A Secret Dispersal: Derrida's Satellites Leonard P, Parallax, 2014, 20 (1), 98-111
A Revolution in Code: Hari Kunzru's Transmission and the Cultural Politics of Hacking Leonard P, Textual Practice, 2014, 28 (2), 267-287
Literature after Globalization: Textuality, Technology and the Nation-State Leonard P, 2013, Bloomsbury
Open Networks, Distributed Identities: Cory Doctorow and the Literature of Free Culture Leonard P, Junctures: The Journal for Thematic Dialogue, 2012, 15, 9-18
Geopoiesis, or the Responsibility of Literature Leonard P, Oxford Literary Review, 2011, 33 (2), 189-205
Press expertise
Professor Leonard is an expert in the field of contemporary literature, literary and cultural theory, and contemporary philosophy. His work focuses on debates about nationality and globalization, technology and digital culture, orbital culture, and space sustainability.