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Research group: Centre for Migration and Postcolonial Studies (MAPS)

Exploring the impact of postcolonialism and migration on the literary and cultural landscape — now and in the future.

About our research

The Centre for Migration and Postcolonial Studies (MAPS) works in the fields of postcolonial, migration and diaspora studies, literary and cultural geography, and global testimony studies.

Our research deals with a range of disciplines relating to South Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and South East Asia, as well as minority and diasporic cultures in the UK and beyond.

With the current migration crisis, our work has never been more timely or more relevant.

We often work with award-winning writers from the Manchester Writing School, one of the largest postgraduate English and creative writing communities in the UK.

Manchester itself has a history of migration and postcolonial encounters, making it one of the more ethnically diverse cities in Europe.

We want to create an inclusive, international culture at the University through local and international partnerships, and by exploring how histories of migration shape and mark literary and cultural landscapes.

Our continuing aim is to connect the history of colonialism to the literary and cultural future.

As well as our MA English course in postcolonial studies, we also run a speakers’ series, a reading group, a film club and a writers’ forum on creative-critical conversations.

Our research topics

Postcolonial Trauma and Testimony Studies

The intersecting fields of trauma and testimony studies are widely-represented in MAPS. Professor Minoli Salgado’s Leverhulme-funded research draws on fieldwork in Cambodia and Sri Lanka, as well as work with the National Peace Council, Sri Lanka, and has led to the publication of a monograph, a work of non-fiction and a project on ethical storytelling. This research is reflected in the MA course on Postcolonial Trauma which engages with literature and film from these areas, as well as from Nigeria, South Africa, Sudan and Northern Ireland. It is currently taught by Dr Eleanor Byrne, Dr Muzna Rahman and Dr Sonja Lawrenson. 

Climate Change and the Global South

Professor Monique Roffey’s creative and critical practice intersects with climate activism. An award-winning environmental novelist, she co-founded Writers Rebel inside Extinction Rebellion in 2019 and is a member of the Hard Art Collective. Monique co-designed and co-teaches on the Green Writing elective in the Manchester Writing School. Dr Chloe Germaine and Dr Ben Bowman are leading a project on Climate Imaginaries relating to climate fiction and young people’s environmentalism funded by the Political Studies Association. In addition, Dr Muzna Rahman is interested in the intersections between climate change, sustainability and literary studies, and has worked as a visiting researcher at the International Centre for Climate Change and Development in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Decolonising Comedy Studies

Dr Sarah Ilott leads on a project that challenges the existing canon of comedy theory. Working with researchers, performers and writers from across the globe, the project provides alternative histories and ways of understanding comic performance that decentre the privileged white, male, European subject position.

Our doctoral researchers

Fatimah Alshahrani

Pronouns: she/her

Supervisory team: Professor Minoli Salgado and Dr. Blanka Grzegorczyk

Thesis title: Trauma and Identity in Selected Work by Arab-American Women Writers Before and After 9/11

In my thesis I explore the evolving representation of womanhood and trauma in Arab- American women’s literature, with a particular focus on the shifting portrayals before and after the tragic events of 9/11. Through a comparative framework, the study examines how narratives of female identity transform across these temporal contexts, paying special attention to the intersections of gender, race, and trauma. Central to this inquiry is the representation of multiracial women who experience rejection both within Arab-American communities and in the broader American racial discourse.

Jack Bartley

Pronouns: he/him

Supervisory team: Dr. Matthew Carter, Prof. Minoli Salgado, Dr. Beccy Kennedy-Schtyk

Thesis title: “A Spirited Celebration and a Tearful Catharsis”: Representations of Korean Indigenous Religious Practices and Folklore as Processors of Colonial Trauma

My doctoral thesis interrogates depictions of Korean indigenous religious practices and folklore in popular culture as symptomatic of self-policing and processing societal trauma following colonial rule. I approach this by analysing various representations of mudang and the gumiho through an interdisciplinary theoretical framework of postcolonial, trauma, and feminist film theories. By using this hybrid methodology of Western and Eastern perspectives, a timeline of trauma response can be unearthed in Korea’s collective cultural memory.

Devjani Bodepudi 

Pronouns: she/her

Supervisory team: Dr Sarah Ilott, Dr Muzna Rahman, Dr Malika Booker

Thesis title: The Ghosts are Watching from the Banyan Tree: Seeking Self, Solace and Transformation through Ecological Narratives and Landscapes of Bengali Folklore and Mythology.

I’m researching the significance of the ecology found within Bengali folktales and Indic mythic traditions to create my own novel in verse in order to investigate grief and loss through mixing languages and narratives.

Sumithreyi Sivapalan

Pronouns: she/her

Supervisory team: Prof Minoli Salgado and Dr Malika Booker

Thesis title: Borders and Belonging: exploring ‘home’ through the persona poetry of Sri Lankan women.

My creative-critical thesis explores how the persona poem, with its distinct voice and idiosyncratic materiality, is an apt vehicle to examine the various forms in which the longing for home manifests itself. Specifically, it addresses the diverse avenues taken in an attempt to fulfil or pacify this yearning which, especially in the Sri Lankan civil war and post-war context, affects residents and migrants alike.

Selected projects

Key publications

  • Key publications

    Key publications

    Non-fiction

    Selected fiction and poetry

  • Events

    Events

    Conference: Comedy and Racial Justice, Manchester Metropolitan University (UK)

    • 22nd-23rd April 2025

    Mixed Bill and Manchester Metropolitan University’s Centre for Migration and Postcolonial Studies

    This conference seeks to investigate how comedy – as an artistic form, performance mode and research discipline – functions as a critical tool in the fight for racial justice. In so doing, it will shine a light on research that often struggles to be taken seriously within the academy. While acknowledging the sometimes-fraught relationship that comedy has with racial justice, racism and colonialisation, we hope to centre discussion on how comedy can push beyond this heritage and be used productively to support racial justice and liberation without reproducing racial trauma. More details are available here.

    Screening: Touch of Pink

    • 22nd April 2025

    Dr Sarah Ilott is doing a tie-in public event at HOME – a screening of queer interethnic romcom Touch of Pink and a Q&A with the director, Ian Iqbal Rashid. More details can be found here.

    Go Global Event: Jason Allen-Paisant in Conversation with Monique Roffey

    • 5th March 2025

    A reading, discussion and drinks reception hosting Jason Allen-Paisant who will talk about his first non-fiction book, The Possibility of Tenderness, a personal history and migration tale narrated through the lens of plants and dreams. Details here.

    News Updates: 

    Zodwa Nynoni is premiering a new opera, ‘TEARS ARE NOT MEANT TO STAY INSIDE’ in July 2025. Details are here: https://buxtonfestival.co.uk/whats-on/shorts

    Her interview with Professor Sam Kasule (University of Derby), ‘Post-colonial Theatre and Performance’ is being published in a  special issue on African opera in African Performance Review (APR)  (http://africantheatreassociation.org/apr) in July 2025.

    2024 events

    The Great Waking Up – a live event about the writing world and the climate emergency

    • 17 April 2024

    Amitav Ghosh’s The Great Derangement (2015) said that writers were asleep on climate change, and there had been great apathy from publishers too. Not enough writers were writing about this oncoming catastrophe and any book attempting the subject simply fell into sci-fi or horror as a genre. Today, just a decade later, the opposite is true. There has been a “great waking up” in the literary world around climate change. Not only have we seen novels with massive sales (such as The Overstory or The Ministry for the Future) but writers in the UK have never been more active and articulate about climate change. There are now several active climate change writers’ groups.

    This event brought together a unique panel to talk about why writers need to be awake and active in this current crisis, and what impact can literary activism make. What can writers now do? How can we unite to face the coming changes in our climate?
    Invited speakers:

    • James Miller, novelist, Writers Rebel
    • Chis Redmond, poet and host for legendary poetry night Tongue Fu, one half of Hot Poets
    • Leena Norms, poet and podcaster
    • Chaired by Monique Roffey, writer and professor at Manchester Met’s Writing School, co-founder of Writers Rebel, and ambassador for Just Stop Oil.

    Out of Sri Lanka: The Poetry of Witness

    • 1 May 2024

    A hybrid literature event hosted at the Manchester Poetry Library with a panel discussion on the politics and poetics of witnessing and video recordings of poetry readings, followed by the Manchester book launch of Out of Sri Lanka: Tamil, Sinhala and English poetry from Sri Lanka and its diasporas.

    Invited speakers: Vidyan Ravinthiran, poet, editor and literary scholar (Harvard), Seni Seneviratne, poet and editor, and Shash Trevett, poet, translator and editor. Chaired by Minoli Salgado, writer and Professor of International Writing (Manchester Met).

    2023 events

    Testimony and the Postcolonial: A Symposium

    • April 2023

    The event featured papers by Dr Sonja Andermahr (University of Northampton); Dr Lindsey Moore (Lancaster University); Professor Minoli Salgado (Manchester Metropolitan University), Dr Henghameh Saroukhani (University of Durham) and Dr Agnes Wooley (Birkbeck, University of London). 

    It was followed by the Manchester book launch of Prof. Minoli Salgado’s Twelve Cries from Home: In Search of Sri Lanka’s Disappeared at the Manchester Poetry Library. 

    Further details

Partners

Organisations we work with

Logo of Home, Manchester

HOME Cinema

Logo for Massey University in New Zealand

Massey University, New Zealand

Logo for the International Centre for Climate Change and Development

ICCCAD

Contact information

Contact us

For general enquiries about our Centre for Migration and Postcolonial Studies research group, you can contact its leads:

[email protected] [email protected]

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