Maggie Tonkin

Dr Maggie Tonkin

Senior Lecturer

School of Humanities

Faculty of Arts, Business, Law and Economics

Eligible to supervise Masters and PhD - email supervisor to discuss availability.


My research ranges from literary studies to dance and performance studies.  My literary interests are in twentieth and twenty-first century literature, with special interests in postmodernism and women's writing. I have published widely on the British writer Angela Carter, including the monograph, Angela Carter and Decadence: Critical Fictions/Fictional Critiques (Palgrave, 2012). I sit on the International Advisory Panel of the Angela Carter Society and regularly publish articles and book chapters in Carter studies. Current projects include an examination of the literary and wider cultural impact of existential psychiatrist R.D. Laing.

I have a dance background and write and review regularly for the national dance magazine, Dance Australia; my reviews have also appeared in The Conversation, The Australian and Ballettanz, one of Europe's leading dance industry magazines. In addition to sitting on judging panels for various dance awards, I am also a member of the Adelaide Critics Circle. My monograph FIFTY: Half a Century of Australian Dance Theatre, a history of Australia’s oldest contemporary dance company, was published in 2016 by Wakefield Press. I am currently researching the choreographic process of Meryl Tankard, one of Australia’s most significant choreographers, for which I was awarded a National Library of Australia Fellowship (2018).

Arts and cultural policy is an emerging area of research. I am part of the tri-university group Reset, which seeks new ideas and practices to help us rethink the value of arts and culture, and re-establish their place in public policy and everyday citizenship.

 

  • Appointments

    Date Position Institution name
    2017 - ongoing Senior Lecturer University of Adelaide
    2014 - 2016 Lecturer University of Adelaide
  • Awards and Achievements

    Date Type Title Institution Name Country Amount
    2018 Research Award Shortlisted, Hazel Rowley Fellowship for Biography Hazel Rowley Foundation Australia -
    2018 Fellowship Australian National Library Fellowhip 2019 National Library of Australia Australia $25,000
  • Education

    Date Institution name Country Title
    2007 University of Adelaide Australia PhD

Literary Studies

I convene a number of survey courses in literary studies:

ENGL 3047: Rhapsody and Revolution: Romanticism and its Legacies

ENGL 2051: Literature and Society in Victorian Britain

ENGL 3051:  Modernisms

ENGL 3045: The Question of Postmodernism: Texts and Issues

I also team teach into Icons of Decadence and Introduction to English.

Bachelor of Creative Arts

I am the Program Convenor for the Bachelor of Creative arts, and convene the core subjects for that degree:

CRARTS 1001: What is this Thing Called Art?

CRARTS 2002: Creativity and the Adelaide Festival

  • Current Higher Degree by Research Supervision (University of Adelaide)

    Date Role Research Topic Program Degree Type Student Load Student Name
    2024 Principal Supervisor Mary Shelley’s exploration of ambition, women, and Nature in her Romantic fiction. Master of Philosophy Master Full Time Miss Nadia Marie Jeffries
    2024 Co-Supervisor Connection and Dislocation: Nomadic Cartographies in the Writings of Janette Turner Hospital Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Miss Victoria Rose Circelli
    2023 Principal Supervisor Form, identity, and Homeric reception in the poetry of Alice Oswald and Ocean Vuong Master of Philosophy Master Full Time Miss Thao Gia Bui
    2023 Principal Supervisor A feature documentary screenplay about two icons of Australian choreography collaborating on a new dance work inspired by dance heritage archives. Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Mr Joshua Tyler
    2022 Principal Supervisor Performance in the poetry of Marceline Desbordes-Valmore Master of Philosophy Master Full Time Miss Hannah Ann Violet Doyle
    2022 Co-Supervisor Carnal Femininity: A Short Story Collection and Accompanying Exegesis Master of Philosophy Master Full Time Miss Victoria Tomaszczyk
    2019 Co-Supervisor Fragments of Self: Contemporary Women's Life Writing Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Ms Meg Madden
  • Past Higher Degree by Research Supervision (University of Adelaide)

    Date Role Research Topic Program Degree Type Student Load Student Name
    2020 - 2023 Co-Supervisor 'Moon Overhead, Nothing Moving' + 'Fragment, Lyric, Essay: An exegetical reflection on essaying and fragmentation' Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Ms Gemma Lynn Parker
    2020 - 2023 Co-Supervisor Drifting: a Fire Island Derive Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Mr Jacob Sunter
    2019 - 2023 Principal Supervisor Muslim Women's Identity in a Changing World: the Fiction of Leila Aboulela Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Mrs Najla Fahad Alyabis
    2018 - 2020 Principal Supervisor We are the granddaughters of the witches you couldn't burn’: Feminist Afterlives of the Witch in Popular Culture Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Dr Brydie Kosmina
    2018 - 2022 Co-Supervisor NUMBERS BY PAINT Quantifying aesthetic receptions Master of Philosophy Master Full Time Ms Edith Mina Lyre
    2017 - 2019 Co-Supervisor Bound by Narrative: 'Reading' the Female Body and Genre in Nineteenth-Century British Literature Master of Philosophy Master Full Time Miss Charlotte Eliza Brake Kelso
    2015 - 2017 Co-Supervisor Me, Myself and the Other: Self-reflexivity in Travel Writing Master of Philosophy Master Full Time Ms Tina Morganella
    2014 - 2016 Co-Supervisor 'Petticoated Police,' 'Intimate Watching' and Private Agency(ies): Reading the Female Detective of Fin-de-siecle British Literature Master of Philosophy Master Full Time Genevieve Lauren Seys
    2012 - 2016 Co-Supervisor 'Passionately Subjective': Challenges to Identity in the Works of Amy Levy Master of Philosophy Master Full Time Miss Carolyn Louise Lake
  • Position: Senior Lecturer
  • Phone: 83135623
  • Email: maggie.tonkin@adelaide.edu.au
  • Fax: 83134341
  • Campus: North Terrace
  • Building: Napier, floor 6
  • Org Unit: School of Humanities

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