About me

She/her pronouns

As a second year PhD researcher at the University of Warwick, I work within the field of contemporary ecopoetics, investigating the disruptive potential of strange or unloved creatures.

Research interests

​Poetics; ecocriticism; posthumanism; feminist theory; postcolonial ecologies; environmental humanities; interdisciplinary perspectives from the arts; interdisciplinary perspectives from the environmental sciences; environmental aesthetics

Get in touch

Email: lizzie.smith@warwick.ac.uk

Twitter: @Lizzie_EJSmith

Thesis description

One facet of mainstream conservation narratives is an emphasis on “charismatic” organisms at the expense of “uncharismatic” others, like insects or bacteria, which nonetheless play a vital role in ecology. In response, my research will centre such “uncharismatic” organisms, exploring poetic encounters with uncharismatic organisms in contemporary environmental poetry across a range of global contexts. These organisms often have a disruptive effect, provoking feelings of disgust, even as they generate a strange fascination. My research will turn towards, rather than away from, this disruption, through a range of poetry from Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Elizabeth-Jane Burnett, Olive Senior, Linda Hogan, Christian Bök, Adam Dickinson, Brenda Hillman, and dg nanouk okpik. My chapters will investigate alien invertebrates, anthropomorphised plants, insect articulations, the textual and bodily intimacies of bacteria, and the disruptive potential of decomposing organisms.

My research will intersect with areas of discussion like dark ecology, materialist ecofeminism, anthropomorphism, ecosemiosis, and affect theory. Recognising the importance of acknowledging the intersections between inequality and environmental harm, decolonial ecologies will inform my approach not only on a theoretical level, but also on a structural level.

Faced with the challenge of addressing the uneven harms of climate change, this research suggests that we might find new routes for encountering nonhuman others through disruption itself.

Conferences and publications

Posthuman Bodies & Embodied Posthumanisms: An Interdisciplinary Conference, University of Warwick, October 2022

Speaker for a paper entitled ‘Bodily Immersion or Aesthetic Extraction: Representing Marine Invertebrates in Contemporary Ecopoetics'

​'Beachcombing: Claiming, Disclaiming, and Reclaiming in the Anthropocene'. Informal article in paratextmag.com, December 2020: https://paratextmag.com/2020/12/31/beachcombing-claiming-disclaiming-and-reclaiming-in-the-anthropocene/.

'The Anthropocene Writ Small: Lichens and their Scales'. Informal article in areyouevergreen.com, August 2021: https://www.areyouevergreen.com/articles-1/the-anthropocene-writ-small.