From September 2018: Research Associate, Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health, University of Exeter

Early Career Fellow, Institute of Advanced Study, University of Warwick (May 2017-April 2018)

Visiting Scholar, Institute of Comparative Literature and Society, Columbia University (January-June 2015)

PhD in English and Comparative Literary Studies, University of Warwick (2017)

MA in Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, London (2011)

BA in English Language and Literature, University of Leeds (2010)

My research interests include science and literature, critical race studies and decoloniality, and biosemiotics. In literary studies, I work primarily on speculative and contemporary fiction. I'm currently working on my first monograph, a study of genetics and postgenomics in fiction and poetry, policy, medical/genetic communities, and scientific texts.

My doctoral thesis focused on the writing of "epigenetic" forms of change in Doris Lessing’s speculative fiction, in relation to themes of governance, labour, survival and resistance, titled "'Life Itself' in Doris Lessing's Space Fiction: Evolution, Epigenetics, and Culture." It was supervised by Prof Stephen Shapiro and Dr Graeme Macdonald, and funded by a Wolfson Foundation Postgraduate Scholarship in the Humanities.

Publications

Books

Narrative in the Age of the Genome: Genetic Worlds. Forthcoming: Bloomsbury.

Readings. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Author) & Lara Choksey (Ed.). Calcutta: Seagull, 2014.

Chapters and Articles

"Wagering the Future: Split Collectives and Decolonial Praxis in Assia Djebar’s A Sister to Scheherazade and Nalo Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber," in: (Un)Ethical Futures: Utopia, Dystopia and Science Fiction, ed. Andrew Milner, Zachary Kendal, Aisling Smith, and Giulia Champion, forthcoming.

"The Runaway Sign: Semiotic Adaptation in Literary Analysis." Sanglap: Journal of Literary and Cultural Inquiry 2.1, 25-49 (2015).

Reviews and Essays

Doris Lessing and the Forming of History. Kevin Brazil, David Sergeant, and Tom Sperlinger (Eds.). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016. Doris Lessing Studies 35 (December 2017), 5-8.

"Academic Freedom and Society: Some Critical Questions." Exchanges: The Warwick Research Journal 5(1), 111-116 (2017).

"Rimbaud en Harar." (Spanish, trans. Tania Ganitsky) Otro Páramo (58). May 2017.

"The Ghettos of Pilkhana." in: Strangely Beloved: Writings on Calcutta. Nilanjana Gupta (Ed). New Delhi: Rainlight/Rupa, 2014, 160-163.

Conference Papers and Talks

April 2018. (Roundtable discussant) “Literature and Biology in the Genomic Era.” 35th Anniversary of Gillian Beer’s Darwin’s Plots. British Society for Literature and Science. Museum of Natural History, Oxford.

March 2018. “The Interwar Eugenicists.” British National Eugenics: The Golden Age. Warwick Student Union’s Hidden Histories series. University of Warwick, Coventry.

December 2017. "Split Collectives and Decolonial Praxis in Assia Djebar's Ombre sultane and Nalo Hopkinson's Midnight Robber," (Un)Ethical Futures: Utopia, Dystopia and Science Fiction Conference, Monash University, Melbourne.

November 2017. “Racism after Brexit: National Questions, Global Challenges.” Coventry Against Racism. Coventry Transport Museum, Coventry.

May 2016. "Changing Places: Political Transition and Evolutionary Time in Doris Lessing's Space Fiction," Warwick English and CLS 12th Annual Postgraduate Symposium, University of Warwick, Coventry.

April 2016. "The SF Challenge to Speculative Genomics," The Matter of Resistance Conference, University of Warwick, Coventry.

September 2014. "Genetics, Governmentality and the Possibility of Change in Doris Lessing's The Making of the Representative for Planet 8," Doris Lessing 2014: An International Conference, University of Plymouth, Plymouth.

November 2013. “Women in cities? Responding to gang rape in three Indian cities,” Centre for Built Environment International Symposium: Cities Under Restoration, Rabindranath Tagore Centre, Kolkata.

Activities and Event Organisation

• Genetic States: Policy, Fiction, Nation. One-day workshop at the Institute of Advanced Study, University of Warwick. June 8 2018.
• Inclusive Teaching Forum: BME Student Experience and Creating an Anti-Racist Classroom

• 'Racism on Campus' student-staff roundtable series, which facilitates student-staff dialogue on racism and the university, and is supported by Warwick's Diversity and Inclusion Team.

• "Academic Freedom and Society: A One Day Conference," University of Warwick, June 2 2017.

• 2016-17: Graduate Representative for the Centre for Research in Philosophy, Literature and the Arts (CRPLA)

L dot E dot Choksey at warwick dot ac dot uk

Teaching

2017-18

EN122 Modes of Reading

EN229 Literary and Cultural Theory

EN263 Devolutionary British Fiction (Term 2 only)

EN361 Introduction to Alternative Lifeworlds Fiction

2015-17

EN123 Modern World Literatures

Academic Writing