Sarah Daw

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College: College of Humanities
Discipline: English
Department: English

I currently hold two fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh. From September- December 2016 I am the Environmental Humanities Network's Environmental Humanities Visiting Research Fellow. I also hold a Postdoctoral Fellowship October 2016 - July 2017.


I am currently working on my second major research project, "Unknowing Nature: The Development of Ecological Thinking in British and American Science and Literature from 1945”. This is a comparative study of the language of ecology in British and American popular science writing, journalism and literature written after 1945. My work evaluates the impact of the popularisation of the twentieth century’s key scientific advancements, particularly those of quantum physics, the nuclear bomb and space travel, on representations of ecology in the work of science writers, journalists and poets in both Britain and America. It maps the transatlantic flow of postwar science in literary work and in the popular press, demonstrating the significant influence that mid-twentieth century science had on the development of late twentieth and twenty-first century ecological thinking.

I received my PhD from the University of Exeter in February 2016, for the thesis: "Writing Ecology in Cold War American Literature". This included detailed case studies on the authors: Paul Bowles, J. D. Salinger, Mary McCarthy, Peggy Pond Church and Rachel Carson.