David Farrier
Professor of Literature and the Environment

- English Literature
- School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures
Contact details
- Tel: +44 (0)131 650 3607
- Email: David.Farrier@ed.ac.uk
- Web: Edinburgh Research Explorer profile
Address
- Street
-
Room 2.52
50 George Square - City
- Edinburgh
- Post code
- EH8 9LH
Availability
Office Hour: Tuesdays 1.00 - 2.00pm
Background
David Farrier studied at the University of Leeds (BA, MA, PhD). Before being appointed at Edinburgh in 2010, he was Lecturer in Postcolonial Literature for four years at the University of Leicester (where he was awarded a University Teaching Award in 2008). In 2017 he held a Leverhulme Visiting Fellowship at the University of New South Wales.
Research summary
David's most recent books consider the new reality of the Anthropocene. Anthropocene Poetics: Deep Time, Sacrifice Zones, and Extinction (Minnesota Press, 2019) is a study of contemporary environmental poetry, and Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils (4th Estate/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2020) explores what traces of present societies will persist in the deep future. Footprints won the Royal Society of Literature's Giles St Aubyn award for unpublished non-fiction in 2017. David is particularly interested in how literature, especially poetry, responds to the challenges of the Anthropocene.
Past research interests
David is also the author of Postcolonial Asylum (Liverpool University Press, 2011), and Unsettled Narratives (Routledge, 2007).Project activity
David convenes the Edinburgh Environmental Humanities Network.
He spent three months as a visiting scholar at the University of New South Wales in 2017, courtesy of a Leverhulme Fellowship.
In 2016 David was an expert advisor on 'Deep Time,' the 2016 Edinburgh International Festival opening evet, seen live by over 25,000 people.
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Hand in Glove
In:
Orion Magazine, vol. 39
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
On John Berger and Rediscovering Drawing
Research output: › Other contribution (Published) -
With apologies to Susan Sontag, we’re going to need metaphor to get through this global illness: David Farrier on the ways we talk about Coronavirus
Literary essay › Other contribution (Published) -
Desire paths
Literary essay › Other contribution (Published) -
On the reverie and detachment of the American road trip
Literary essay › Other contribution (Published) -
Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils
(320 pages)
Research output: › Book (Published) -
Refugee Imaginaries: Research Across the Humanities
(544 pages)
Research output: › Book (Published) -
Anthropocene Poetics: Deep Time, Sacrifice Zones, and Extinction
(184 pages)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctvc5pcn9
Research output: › Book (Published) -
Unexpected encounters with Deep Time
In:
Environmental Humanities, vol. 10, pp. 213-225
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-4385534
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Editorial (Published) -
Animal detectives and ‘Anthropocene noir’ in Chloe Hooper’s A child’s book of true crime
(20 pages)
In:
Textual Practice, pp. 875-893
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/0950236X.2016.1275756
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published)