My role at CCCU involves teaching at all levels from Foundation to Postgraduate, supervision, research, leadership and administration.
Dr Sonia Overall
Reader
School of Humanities & Educational Studies
I am a published writer and psychogeographer. I am currently a Reader in Creative Writing at CCCU.
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, experimental and hybrid forms and performance text. My writing and research draw strongly on walking practices, psychogeography and place-based methods. I am interested in contemporary responses to folklore and folk culture, including the burgeoning field of folklore activism, and in exploring these creatively using place, memory, text and objects.
I have a keen interest in the development of new methodologies for creative writing and walking, collaborative and interdisciplinary projects.
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
- Being Human: Kent - Women Making Sense. Researcher(s): Dr Susan Civale, Mrs Helen Wright, Ms Peggy Riley, Mr William Hill, Dr Sonia Overall, Mr Jon Schwochert, Dr Rachael Stone, Dr Astrid Stilma. [Project]
- Celebrating the Kentish Hooden Horse (Poor Old Horse). Researcher(s): Dr Sonia Overall. [Project]
- How might a new approach to the production of Neo-Victorian writing, using experimental creative writing, historic material research, and ‘reenactment’, help resolve the tensions between creativity, imagination, and historical accuracy in the genre? What does the personal experience of neurodivergence add to the processes and outcomes of this approach to historical creative writing?. Researcher(s): Miss Elizabeth Waterman-Scrase. Supervisor(s): Dr Sonia Overall, Professor Carolyn Oulton. [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]
- The YA novel: a conduit for exploring female disempowerment and self-identity, as demonstrated through the experiences of children of d/Deaf adults (CODAs) and of d/Deaf young adults. Researcher(s): Ms Lucie Bowins Roberts. Supervisor(s): Dr Sonia Overall, Professor Carolyn Oulton. [Postgraduate Research Project]
- Writing on the edge of land and sea - Being Human Festival 2022. Researcher(s): Dr Sonia Overall. [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.
- “Show Day”: the long roots of Jackson’s small town folk horror Overall, S., (Apr 2025): Shirley Jackson Society. [Journal article]
- Book review: 'John Clark, The Green Children of Woolpit: Chronicles, Fairies and Facts in Medieval England' Overall, S., (13 Jan 2025): Penn State University Press. [Journal article]
- The "Green Children of Woolpit": a weird allegory of isolation, otherness and belonging Overall, S., (01 Mar 2025): Penn State University Press. [Journal article]
- The wall Overall, S., (04 Jan 2024). [Journal article]
- Walking towards embodied understanding Overall, S., (18 Dec 2023), Good Education in a Fragile World: Routledge. [Book chapter]
- #DistanceDrift: a case study in method Overall, S., (17 Mar 2023), Archaeology as Festival: Virtual wanderings through festivalCHAT during Covid-19. [Book chapter]
- ‘Poor Old Horse’: responding creatively to place and custom Overall, S., Kent Maps Symposium. [Conference paper]
- (pre)possessed: an erasure sequence Overall, S., (Oct 2023): Supernatural Studies. [Journal article]
- Beeseching day Overall, S., (Jan 2023). [Journal article]
- Enlightenment Services, Inc. Overall, S., (Jan 2023), Streetcake Experimental Writing Prize Anthology : Streetcake. [Book chapter]
- Fossil deep Overall, S., (Sep 2023), Speculative Nature Writing Anthology : Guillemot Press. [Book chapter]
- That which washes ashore Overall, Sonia, (Dec 2023), The Totem: Seaside Gothic. [Book chapter]
- The Green Children of Woolpit: a weird allegory of isolation, otherness and belonging Overall, S., Imaginative Landscapes and Otherworlds . [Conference paper]
- Three walks without maps Overall, S., (Feb 2024), Migrations and home: The elements of place: Nature Culture. [Book chapter]
- Writing haunted landscapes Overall, S., Haunted Landscapes. [Conference paper]
- Eden Overall, S., (21 Jul 2022): Weatherglass Books. [Book]
- Floodwater Overall, S., (Apr 2022). [Journal article]
- Re-composition: a poetry walk Overall, S., (19 May 2022), The Walkbook: Walking Publics / Walking Arts. [Book chapter]
- Green is the colour Overall, S., (14 Jun 2021). [Journal article]
- Heavy time Overall, S., (2021). London, UK. [Book]
- walk write (repeat) Overall, S., (18 Jan 2021). Axeminster, UK. [Book]
- Being Horse: walking as an impossible beast Overall, S., Frost, J., (Sep 2020), Walking Bodies: Papers, Provocations, Actions. Axeminster, UK. [Book chapter]
- Positive Overall, S., (14 Dec 2020). [Journal article]
- Tarot reading for the end times Overall, S., (Dec 2020). [Journal article]
- The writer’s hunger Overall, S., (2020), Genesis and Revision in Modern British and Irish Writing: Palgrave Macmillan. [Book chapter]
- Thicket Overall, S., (13 Nov 2020). [Journal article]
- Being Horse Overall, S., Frost, J., Walking’s New Movement. [Conference or workshop item]
- Secret writing in Margate Caves Overall, S., Oulton, C., Being Human Festival. [Conference or workshop item]
- Walking into creative writing Overall, S., (09 Dec 2019). [Journal article]
- When the ground grabs your ankles: or how to write about freaking out Overall, S., Folk Horror in the 21st Century. [Conference or workshop item]
- Psycho geography: the monstrous everyday Overall, S., Faculty of Arts and Humanities Annual Conference: Landscape. [Conference paper]
- Walking, making, thinking Overall, S.. [PhD Thesis]
- Don't walk that way: why heritage sites need psychogeography Overall, S., TAG 2017. [Conference paper]
- Looking though psychogeography-tinted glasses: walking, reading and writing place Overall, S., English Literature & Creative and Professional Writing Research Forum. [Conference paper]
- Moving around children’s fiction: agentic and impossible mobilities Murray, L., Overall, S., (31 May 2017): Taylor & Francis. [Journal article]
- Reimagining place: creative walking, writing and reading Overall, S., RC21 Leeds: Rethinking Urban Global Justice. [Conference paper]
- The walking dead, or why psychogeography matters Overall, S., (26 May 2017), Re-enchanting the Academy: Rubedo Press. [Book chapter]
- Walkshop and soundshot – a dérive and participatory performance Overall, S., (Jun 2017): University of Colorado Boulder. [Journal article]
- Walking backwards: psychogeographical approaches to heritage Overall, S., CHAT2016: Rurality. [Conference paper]
- Women Who Walk Overall, S., Beyond the Centre: Faculty of Arts & Humanities. [Conference paper]
- Writing and walking the labyrinth: a case study Overall, S., (15 Apr 2016), Learning with the Labyrinth: Creating Reflective Space in Higher Education: Palgrave Macmillan. [Book chapter]
- The art of walking Overall, S., (12 Jun 2015). Bristol: Shearsman Books. [Book]
- The Walking Dead, or why psychogeography matters Overall, S., Re-enchanting the Academy. [Conference paper]
- Walking against the current: generating creative responses to place Overall, S., Place-Based Arts: Brighton Writes. [Conference paper]
- Walking against the current: generating creative responses to place Overall, S., (01 Mar 2015): Intellect. [Journal article]
- inverted [poem], subliminal [poem], promenade [poem], retreat [poem] Overall, S., (Apr 2014), Shearsman. Bristol: Shearsman Books. [Book chapter]
- Sex in Eden: reading, writing and inhabiting fictional worlds Overall, S., Beyond the Sheets: Sexualities in the Age of Digital Reproduction. [Conference paper]
- Richter's Paris [poem], Margate, 5th May [poem] Overall, S., (Apr 2013), Shearsman. Bristol: Shearsman Books. [Book chapter]
- The writer's hunger: considering a novel in progress Overall, S., Fashioning the Fictive: Literary Creation from Inspiration to Publication, International Joint Conference (EMMA, ITEM). [Conference paper]
- The realm of shells Overall, S.. London: Harper Perennial. [Book]
- The realm of shells Overall, S., (2006). London: Fourth Estate. [Book]
- A likeness Overall, S., (2005). London: Harper Perennial. [Book]
- Um Pintor na Corte Overall, S., (2005): Livraria Civilizacao Editora. [Book]
- A likeness Overall, S., (2004). London: Fourth Estate. [Book]