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Dr Sonia Overall

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

  • 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]
  • Tabletop Role-Playing Game (TTRPG) as a form of literature.. Researcher(s): Mr Joe Arnaud. Supervisor(s): Professor Alan Meades, Dr Sonia Overall, Dr Magz Hall. [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 (past)]

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.