MA candidates
Tamika Ashbrook
BA(Hons) Combined English and Gender Studies (Otago)
Proposed Topic: Understanding the Construction of Silence in Victim Narratives
Email ashta529@student.otago.ac.nz
Supervisor: Simone Drichel
Charlotte Lainchbury
BA(Hons) English (Otago)
Topic: Reading the Work of Robin Hyde in Relation to Disability
Email laich409@student.otago.ac.nz
Supervisor: Jacob Edmond
Randy Makkinga
BA (Hons) English (University of Alberta)
Topic: Religious anxieties concerning damnation in early modern plays
Email makra251@student.otago.ac.nz
Supervisor: Michael Cop
MCW candidates
Dr Lucy Davey
BTech Hons (Massey), PhD (UNSW)
Synopsis: Lucy Davey is writing a fiction novel exploring loss, anger, and feelings of abandonment, through the lens of faith and worship, both in crisis and quotidian life.
Email davlu885@student.otago.ac.nz
Anni Docking
BA (Hons) in English and Education, Diploma of Business Studies, company director, sailor, sports coach and international marathon runner.
Synopsis: This bricolage of memories explores my experiences as an Artist-in-Residence in Orquevaux, France, addressing personal challenges during the Covid pandemic combined with extensive international travel associated with marathon running, in an attempt to find my global place and space.
Email docan668@student.otago.ac.nz
Carolijn Guytonbeck
BA, DipGrad Otago
Synopsis: Carolijn Guytonbeck is writing a digital panpsychist fiction about how unlikely friendships can be made, with a backdrop of the challenges our planet currently faces.
Email carolijn.guytonbeck@otago.ac.nz
Samantha Stephens
Bachelor of Animation with Yoobee School of Design and a Certificate in Advanced Creative Writing with Oxford Continuing Education
Synopsis: Samantha Stephens is exploring themes of betrayal, lies, and love in a novel inspired by Celtic folklore
Email stesa881@student.otago.ac.nz
Anny Trolove
Bachelor of Visual Arts
Synopsis: Angela Trolove BVA (nō Kotirana, nō Airana ōna tīpuna) is writing a story about brawn and [how] being sensible [is relative], rendering her characters through the dialects of their body language.
Email troan023@student.otago.ac.nz
PhD candidates
Marina Cone
Proposed topic: Introspection Machines: Positive Radicalisation in Video Games
Email marina.cone@otago.ac.nz
Previous Qualifications: MA (Thesis), BA (Hons) English
Research Interests: Game studies, spatial theory in literature, literary studies, theory of writing, ruinology
Rachel Connor
Topic: Richard Holland's Buke of the Howlat
Email conra395@student.otago.ac.nz
John Prins
Proposed topic: Atmosphere, mood, and the Poetics of Water in Aotearoa New Zealand Fiction
Email prijo061@student.otago.ac.nz
Previous Qualifications: BA (Otago), GradDip Teaching (Secondary), MA (Auckland)
Kim Cope Tait
Qualifications: MFA in Poetry, Vermont College of Fine Arts, 2000
Proposed topic: Beyond the Veil of Neoliberal Multiculturalism: Personal Ambivalence in the Poetry of Indigenous Women Poets
Email kim.copetait@postgrad.otago.ac.nz
Primary supervisor: Lynley Edmeades
Sandra Anne Jones
BAHons (Cardiff), MA with Distinction (Otago)
Topic: The charters witness by Archbishop of Canterbury Sigeric (990-994 AD) as literary and legal documents and as indicators of monastic development in late tenth century England
Research interests: Early medieval literature, tenth century law codes, church/state relationships in early medieval England and western Europe
Primary Supervisor: Simone Celine Marshall
Stacey Kokaua-Balfour
Qualifications: BAHons (Otago), GradDip Teaching (Victoria), Master of Creative Writing (Massey)
Topic: Akapapa’anga as ‘subjective world building’: A practice in Indigenous ecocriticism
Email kokst848@student.otago.ac.nz
Primary Supervisor: Jacob Edmond
Michael Thames
Proposed topic: Hope within Tolkien's Literary Corpus and its Northern Sources: The Kalevala, Norse Edda, and Beowulf
Primary supervisor: Paul Tankard
Email thami739@student.otago.ac.nz
Lesley den Toon
BAHons Combined Classics and English; MA in English (Otago)
Topic: Slow Classics: Passive Graeco-Romans in the Nineteenth Century
Email denle934@student.otago.ac.nz
Primary supervisor: Thomas McLean
Pamela Treanor
Qualifications: BA in History, Massey University; PGDip Librarianship, Victoria University of Wellington; GradDip Russian, University of Otago, MA English, University of Otago.
Topic: Homer’s Weavers Lost in Translation? Four Centuries of Change in English Translation Choices in the Iliad and the Odyssey
Research Interests: Textile history, Ancient world, Reception theory, Medieval literature