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Dr Sonia Overall

Senior Lecturer

School of Humanities & Educational Studies

I am a published writer and psychogeographer, and currently the Course Director for MA Creative Writing.

My role at CCCU involves teaching at BA and MA level, postgraduate supervision, research, leadership and administration. I am a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing and presently the Course Director for subject's taught MA course.

My teaching focuses on the study and creation of fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry and experimental writing. I previously taught at the University of Kent and Open University, and have worked for CCCU since 2014.

I write fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, performance text and experimental forms. My writing and research draw strongly on walking practices, psychogeography and place-based methods.

I have a keen interest in the development of new methodologies for creative writing and walking, collaborative and interdisciplinary projects and participatory research.

I am interested in supervising practice research students using creative writing in new ways. I would particularly welcome proposals from research students interested in experimental approaches to form or voice; walking and psychogeography; pilgrimage; real and imagined landscapes; place and identity; folk horror, hauntology, and the eerie and uncanny.

Research Projects

  • Historical Creative Writing. Researcher(s): Miss Elizabeth Waterman-Scrase. Supervisor(s): Dr Sonia Overall, Professor Carolyn Oulton. [Postgraduate Research Project]
  • Tabletop Role-Playing Game (TTRPG) as a form of literature.. Researcher(s): Mr Joe Arnaud. Supervisor(s): Dr Alan Meades, Dr Sonia Overall, Dr Andy Birtwistle. [Postgraduate Research Project]
  • The Pilgrim-Writer: The transformative potential of the language arts and pilgrimage – an embodied investigation of self, drawing on theory and practice, including my own direct experience of contemporary pilgrimage and ‘languaging’.. Researcher(s): Ms VICTORIA FIELD. Supervisor(s): Dr Sonia Overall, Professor Carolyn Oulton. [Postgraduate Research Project]

I am a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and member of The National Association of Writers in Education (NAWE). I am also a member of the Thread and Word artist collective, the International Walking Artists Network, and founder of the Women Who Walk Network for walking creatives and academics.

  • Dr Sonia Overall, #DistanceDrift: a case Study in method, Archaeology as Festival: Virtual wanderings through festivalCHAT during Covid-19. [Book chapter]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, (pre)possessed: Revenant. [Journal article]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, (2004), A likeness. London. [Book]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, (2005), A likeness. London. [Book]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, (2004), A likeness. London. [Book]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, (Jan 2023), Beeseching day: Seaside Gothic. [Journal article]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, Mr James Frost, Being Horse, Walking’s New Movement. [Conference or workshop item]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, Mr James Frost, (Sep 2020), Being Horse: walking as an impossible beast, Walking Bodies: Papers, Provocations, Actions. Axeminster, UK. [Book chapter]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, Don't walk that way: why heritage sites need psychogeography, TAG 2017. [Conference paper]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, (21 Jul 2022), Eden. [Book]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, (Jan 2023), Enlightenment Services, Inc., Streetcake Experimental Writing Prize Anthology . [Book chapter]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, (Apr 2022), Floodwater: Seaside Gothic. [Journal article]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, Fossil deep, Speculative Nature Writing Anthology . [Book chapter]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, (14 Jun 2021), Green is the colour. [Journal article]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, (2021), Heavy time. London, UK. [Book]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, (Apr 2014), inverted [poem], subliminal [poem], promenade [poem], retreat [poem], Shearsman. Bristol: Shearsman. [Book chapter]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, Looking though psychogeography-tinted glasses: walking, reading and writing place, English Literature & Creative and Professional Writing Research Forum. [Conference paper]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, (31 May 2017), Moving around children’s fiction: agentic and impossible mobilities: Mobilities. [Journal article]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, (14 Dec 2020), Positive. [Journal article]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, Psycho geography: the monstrous everyday, Faculty of Arts and Humanities Annual Conference: Landscape. [Conference paper]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, (19 May 2022), Re-composition: a poetry walk, The Walkbook. [Book chapter]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, Reimagining place: creative walking, writing and reading, RC21 Leeds: Rethinking Urban Global Justice. [Conference paper]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, (Apr 2013), Richter's Paris [poem], Margate, 5th May [poem], Shearsman. Bristol: Shearsman. [Book chapter]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, Professor Carolyn Oulton, Secret writing in Margate Caves, Being Human Festival. [Conference or workshop item]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, Sex in Eden: reading, writing and inhabiting fictional worlds, Beyond the Sheets: Sexualities in the Age of Digital Reproduction. [Conference paper]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, SUBMITTED (NOT YET ACCEPTED) Walking backwards: psychogeographical approaches to heritage. [Book chapter]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, (Dec 2020), Tarot reading for the end times. [Journal article]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, (12 Jun 2015), The art of walking. Bristol. [Book]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, (2006), The realm of shells. London. [Book]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, The realm of shells. London. [Book]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, The Walking Dead, or why psychogeography matters, Re-enchanting the Academy. [Conference paper]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, (26 May 2017), The walking dead, or why psychogeography matters, Re-enchanting the Academy. [Book chapter]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, (2020), The writer’s hunger, Genesis and Revision in Modern British and Irish Writing. [Book chapter]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, The writer's hunger: considering a novel in progress, Fashioning the Fictive: Literary Creation from Inspiration to Publication, International Joint Conference (EMMA, ITEM). [Conference paper]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, (13 Nov 2020), Thicket. [Journal article]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, (2005), Um Pintor na Corte. [Book]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, (18 Jan 2021), walk write (repeat). Axeminster, UK. [Book]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, Walking against the current: generating creative responses to place, Place-Based Arts: Brighton Writes. [Conference paper]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, (01 Mar 2015), Walking against the current: generating creative responses to place: Journal of Writing in Creative Practice. [Journal article]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, Walking against the current: generating creative responses to place, Place-Based Arts: Brighton Writes. [Conference paper]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, Walking backwards: psychogeographical approaches to heritage, CHAT2016: Rurality. [Conference paper]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, (09 Dec 2019), Walking into creative writing. [Journal article]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, Walking, making, thinking. [PhD Thesis]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, (Jun 2017), Walkshop and soundshot – a dérive and participatory performance: PARtake: The Journal of Performance as Research. [Journal article]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, When the ground grabs your ankles: or how to write about freaking out, Folk Horror in the 21st Century. [Conference or workshop item]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, Women Who Walk, Beyond the Centre: Faculty of Arts & Humanities. [Conference paper]
  • Dr Sonia Overall, (15 Apr 2016), Writing and walking the labyrinth: a case study, Learning with the Labyrinth: Creating Reflective Space in Higher Education. [Book chapter]