Dr Sonia Overall

I am a published writer and psychogeographer. I am currently a Reader in Creative Writing at CCCU.

My role at CCCU involves teaching at all levels from Foundation to Postgraduate, supervision, research, leadership and administration. 

My teaching focuses on the study and creation of fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry and experimental writing. I previously taught at the University of Kent and Open University, and have worked for CCCU since 2014.

'I write fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, experimental and hybrid forms and performance text. My writing and research draw strongly on walking practices, psychogeography and place-based methods. I am interested in contemporary responses to folklore and folk culture, including the burgeoning field of folklore activism, and in exploring these creatively using place, memory, text and objects.

I have a keen interest in the development of new methodologies for creative writing and walking, collaborative and interdisciplinary projects.

I am interested in supervising practice research students using creative writing in new ways. I would particularly welcome proposals from research students interested in experimental approaches to form or voice; walking and psychogeography; pilgrimage; real and imagined landscapes; place and identity; folk horror, hauntology, and the eerie and uncanny.

Research Projects

  • How might a new approach to the production of Neo-Victorian writing, using experimental creative writing, historic material research, and ‘reenactment’, help resolve the tensions between creativity, imagination, and historical accuracy in the genre? What does the personal experience of neurodivergence add to the processes and outcomes of this approach to historical creative writing?. Researcher(s): Miss Elizabeth Waterman-Scrase. Supervisor(s): Dr Sonia Overall, Professor Carolyn Oulton. [Postgraduate Research Project]
  • Tabletop Role-Playing Game (TTRPG) as a form of literature.. Researcher(s): Mr Joe Arnaud. Supervisor(s): Professor Alan Meades, Dr Sonia Overall, Dr Andy Birtwistle. [Postgraduate Research Project]
  • The Pilgrim-Writer: The transformative potential of the language arts and pilgrimage – an embodied investigation of self, drawing on theory and practice, including my own direct experience of contemporary pilgrimage and ‘languaging’.. Researcher(s): Ms Victoria Field. Supervisor(s): Dr Sonia Overall, Professor Carolyn Oulton. [Postgraduate Research Project]
  • The YA novel: a conduit for exploring female disempowerment and self-identity, as demonstrated through the experiences of children of d/Deaf adults (CODAs) and of d/Deaf young adults. Researcher(s): Ms Lucie Bowins Roberts. Supervisor(s): Dr Sonia Overall, Professor Carolyn Oulton. [Postgraduate Research Project]

I am a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and member of The National Association of Writers in Education (NAWE). I am also a member of the Thread and Word artist collective, the International Walking Artists Network, and founder of the Women Who Walk Network for walking creatives and academics.

People search

Contact me

sonia.overall@canterbury.ac.uk
01227921688

Based in

Faculty of Arts Humanities and Education
School of Humanities and Educational Studies