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Our Graduates

Western MA and PhD graduates have been successful in developing a range of careers--from alt-academic employment, to work in the publishing industry, as well as contract and tenure-track faculty positions in colleges and universities--across Canada, the United States, and beyond.

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Graduate Development Workshop
Academic Careers
Friday, January 17 | 2:30-4:30 pm | UC 3415

Winter 2020 Workshop and Seminar Schedule 

academic career panel

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Michelle Banks, Professor of English, Medicine Hat College (July 2014)
Michelle Banks accepted a permanent full-time position as a Professor of English in Medicine Hat College’s University Transfer program in July 2014. After completing her dissertation at Western in 2007, she taught Film Studies and American Studies at Western and English at the University of Windsor. Her research explores the dynamics of connected fictions, and she has published on American fiction, Canadian poetry, and country music.

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Gregory Brophy, Assistant Professor (Tenure-Track), Bishop’s University (July 2014 )
Gregory Brophy is an Assistant Professor of English at Bishop’s University, where he teaches Victorian and Modern British Literature, as well as Film and Visual Culture. He has published articles and book chapters on bodies and machines in Richard Marsh (in Monstrous Media: Imaging Gothic from the Nineteenth Century to the Present) and Havelock Ellis (in Victorian Review), and is currently completing Graphomania! Composing Subjects in Victorian Culture, a monograph on technologies of representation in Victorian Gothic and Sensation fiction.

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Ross Bullen, Lecturer in English at OCAD University (September 2014)
Ross Bullen is a Lecturer in English at OCAD University in Toronto. He has also worked as a Visiting Assistant Professor of American Literature at Mount Allison University, and as a Sessional Instructor at McGill University and Western. He has published articles in American Literature and the Canadian Review of American Studies, and is writing a manuscript on "white elephants" in nineteenth-century American literature and culture.

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Chris Bundock, Assistant Professor (Tenure-Track), Department of English at University of Regina (July 2015 )
Chris Bundock completed his PhD in English at Western in 2010, writing a dissertation on Romantic forms of prophecy. Thereafter he held a SSHRC post-doctoral fellowship for two years and then taught at both Western and Huron University College (LTA). His revised dissertation, Romantic Prophecy and the Resistance to Historicism, is under contract with the University of Toronto Press and slated to be published later this year. He is also co-editing a volume with Elizabeth Effinger, Embodiments of Horror: William Blake’s Gothic Sensibility, for Manchester University Press’ Global Gothic series. Chris has recently been appointed to a tenure-track position as an Assistant Professor of Romanticism at the University of Regina.

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Michelle Coupal, Assistant Professor (Tenure-Track), Laurentian University (July 2013)
Michelle Coupal is Assistant Professor of English at Laurentian University in Sudbury. Michelle completed her Ph.D. in May of 2013 at Western, where she was supervised by Manina Jones and co-supervised by Joel Faflak. Michelle teaches North American Indigenous literatures and Canadian literature. She has also developed courses on media representations of Indigeneity and the rhetoric of apology in Canada. Michelle is working on a monograph—Literature as Testimony: Indian Residential School Fictions in Canada—which will be published by Wilfrid Laurier University Press.

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Tim DeJong, Lecturer in the Department of English at Baylor University (2015)
Tim DeJong completed his PhD in English at Western in the Fall of 2013 after writing his dissertation on the social formation of affect in postwar American poetry. Since that time, he has taught courses at Western and Fanshawe College. Tim has recently accepted a full-time permanent position as Lecturer in the Department of English at Baylor University in Waco, Texas effective September 2015, where he will be teaching American literature and composition courses. His articles and book reviews have appeared in Research in African Literatures, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Modernist Cultures, Modern Language Studies, and English Studies in Canada.

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Elizabeth Effinger, Assistant Professor (Tenure-Track) of 18th-Century & Romantic Literature, University of New Brunswick (Fredericton) (July 2016)
Elizabeth Effinger is currently finishing a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship at Penn State University (2014-2016). She defended her PhD in March 2014 and is currently revising a manuscript that explores the collusion between Romanticism and critical posthumanism. To date, she has five published and three forthcoming peer-reviewed articles, and a volume on William Blake and the Gothic (co-edited with Chris Bundock) under review at Manchester UP. Her new book-length project explores how the emergent sciences and technologies of the long Romantic period contributed to the loss of human exceptionality. She is also in the early stages of a book project (with Claire Colebrook) on the Romantic Anthropocene. She is the Newsletter Editor for the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism (NASSR).

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Ann Gagné, Program Coordinator, Applied Arts & Health Programs, Faculty of Continuing Education and Training (FCET), Seneca College (September 2013)
Since September 2013, Dr. Ann Gagné has been the Program Coordinator for Applied Arts and Health programs for the Faculty of Continuing Education and Training (FCET) at Seneca College. She is responsible for 11 programs including Acting and the Autism & Behaviour Science Graduate Certificate program. She continues to teach a popular Women’s Literature course at Seneca. Previously (2011-2013) she was the Curriculum Leader for FCET writing the curriculum for Seneca’s Social Media Graduate Certificate and overseeing the Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Studies.

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Aisha Haque, MA, Language and Communication Instructor, The Teaching Support Centre at Western (February 2013)
As Language and Communication Instructor at Western’s Teaching Support Centre, Aisha designs and delivers programs related to Teaching Assistant and International Teaching Assistant development and offers workshops on language instruction, communication skills, and best practices in university teaching and learning.  Drawing on her background in postcolonial pedagogy and intercultural training, she is currently co-authoring a Western Purple Guide on teaching international students.  Prior to joining the Teaching Support Centre at Western, Aisha taught Writing, Business Communication, and Bollywood Cinema at Fanshawe College for 3 years.

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David Hickey, Assistant Professor in Professional Writing and Digital Rhetoric, University of PEI (1 Year CLTA)
David Hickey completed his PhD in Canadian Literature at Western in 2014. A person of modesty and wit, he sent the following bio: “When I’m not writing new poems, I'm busy working on a series of essays about the lyrical lives of insects.” 

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Erica Kelly, Professor, Lambton College, Sarnia (2012)
Erica Kelly is a Professor of English at Lambton College in Sarnia, Ontario. She is currently serving as the Project Lead for the college's new Centre for Social Justice, a group that advocates for equitable systems and relationships on campus and in the broader community. She completed her PhD in the spring of 2010, and began her position at Lambton in 2012. She has published articles on social justice and Canadian poetry, and she continues to research the role of art in social change.

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Michael Kightley, Assistant Professor, University of Louisiana at Lafayette (September 2014)
Michael Kightley is an Assistant Professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, where he teaches Old English literature and historical linguistics. After completing his dissertation at Western in 2009, he took a position as an Assistant Professor at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. His research focuses on how Anglo-Saxon racial, ethnic, and familial communities are constructed in medieval poetry and in modern medievalism. He has published in Studies in Medievalism, Neophilologus, Studia Neophilologica, and elsewhere. 

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Rebekah Lamb, Assistant Professor of English Literature and Victorian Studies (tenure-stream) at Our Lady Seat of Wisdom Academy (Barry's Bay, ON) (July 2014)
With the assistance of an Ian J. Boyd fellowship with the Centre for Faith and Culture (in Oxford, UK), two Ontario Graduate Scholarships, and a fellowship with the Kuyper Centre for Emerging Scholars (Western), Rebekah Lamb is finishing her dissertation on the relationship between boredom and poetic aesthetics in Tennyson, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris, and Christina Rossetti--under the supervision of Dr. D.M.R. Bentley and Dr. Christopher Keep (second reader).  In addition to her dissertation work, Rebekah is also completing a study of the relationship between guilt, atonement, and political theory in the phenomenology of Edith Stein--she recently presented a draft of her project to the International Edith Stein Symposium at St. Michael's College (at the U of T), this past March. This summer, Rebekah will be a visiting lecturer at the Centre for Faith and Culture in Oxford (affiliated with the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts in New Hampshire and hosted at St. Benet's Hall, Oxford), giving lectures on the Pre-Raphaelites, Hopkins, and Tolkien. 

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Pascale Manning, Assistant Professor (Tenure-Track), University of Wisconsin Oshkosh (July 2016)
Pascale Manning completed her PhD in English at Western in 2013 with a dissertation on the literary imagination in nineteenth-century empirical science. Since then she has published work on George Eliot and deep time (with Andrea Charise, Seachange), Charles Lyell's geological imagination (Literature Compass), and Robert Louis Stevenson's evolutionary thought experiments (forthcoming in Victorian Literature and Culture). Pascale is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, where she teaches nineteenth-century British literature, literature and science, and Indigenous literature.

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Daniel Martin, Assistant Professor (Tenure-Track) in Victorian Literature at MacEwan University, Edmonton, AB (July 2014)
Dr. Daniel Martin completed his Ph.D. in the department of English at Western University in 2006-07 under the supervision of Dr. Christopher Keep. Prior to his new position at MacEwan University, Daniel held limited-term appointments at Trent University (2007-08), the University of British Columbia (2009), Red Deer College (2010-12), and Wilfred Laurier University, Brantford (2012-14), in addition to a SSHRC postdoctoral fellowship in 2009-10 under the supervision of Dr. Pamela K. Gilbert at the University of Florida.

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Samantha Pennington, Community Engagement Specialist - Fanfiction at Wattpad (2014)
Samantha Pennington (MA 2014) is a Community Engagement Specialist in the area of fanfiction at Wattpad, a Toronto-based company that operates a website and phone and tablet app featuring the work of both amateur writers and famed professionals such as Margaret Atwood, Cory Doctorow, and Paulo Coelho. As a digital storytelling community, Wattpad has allowed amateur writers to secure book deals with more traditional publishing companies because of the traction their stories got online. Samantha supports this community by curating content, analyzing pop culture and fandom trends, and supporting business development initiatives for a community of over 30 million readers and writers. Her research interests include modernist literature, gender and sexuality studies, children’s literature, and fandom studies.

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Diane Piccitto, Assistant Professor (Tenure-Track), Mount Saint Vincent University (July 2015 )
Diane Piccitto holds a BA from Trent University and an MA and PhD from Western. Currently, she is Lecturer of English at Plymouth University, UK, but she will be returning home to Canada in July to take up the post of Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax. Prior to moving to England, she spent several years as a lecturer at the University of Zurich. Her publications include Blake’s Drama: Theatre, Performance, and Identity in the Illuminated Books (Palgrave Macmillan 2014), the co-edited essay collection Romanticism, Rousseau, Switzerland: New Prospects (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), as well as articles on Blake, Byron, the French Revolution, and melodrama. She also co-edits Victoriographies: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century Writing, 1790–1914 (Edinburgh UP).

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Brooke Pratt, Communications Professor at Conestoga College Institute of Techonology and Advanced Learning (2014)
Brooke Pratt (PhD 2010) is a Communications Professor at Conestoga College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning in Kitchener, Ontario. Prior to joining the School of Language and Communications Studies at Conestoga, she taught English and writing at Western, Wilfrid Laurier University, and Humber College. She completed her PhD in 2010 under the supervision of D.M.R. Bentley. She has published articles on Margaret Atwood, Sara Jeannette Duncan, Hugh Hood, Al Purdy, and Duncan Campbell Scott and is currently completing a manuscript on the ruin image in Canadian literature.

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Rasmus Simonsen, Professor, Copenhagen School of Design and Technology (September 2015)
Rasmus R. Simonsen (PhD 2013) has recently accepted a full-time position with the Copenhagen School of Design and Technology, where he will be teaching courses in Media Studies and Digital Communication. In addition to teaching, he will continue his research on American Literature, Queer Theory, and Food Studies. This fall, his article, “Round Hawthorne’s Menagerie: Animality and Childhood,” will be appearing in ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance. Moreover, he is editing a collection of essays with Jodey Castricano titled, Food for Thought: New Critical Perspectives on Veganism and Meat Consumption.

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Shazia Sadaf, Instructor, Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies, Carleton University (December 2017)
Shazia Sadaf teaches Human Rights and Social Justice in the Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. Her research interest lies in the intersectional areas of War on Terror Studies, human rights discourse, and post-9/11 Anglophone literature. Shazia holds a PhD in English from the University of London, and an MA in English Literature & Language from King’s College London. She was a tenured associate professor at Peshawar University in Pakistan before emigrating to Canada in 2013 due to Taliban unrest in the region. After arriving in Canada, she completed a second doctoral degree at Western University in postcolonial studies.

Several of her articles have been published in reputable academic journals like Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, South Asian History and Culture, ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature, the European Journal of English Studies, and The Literary Encyclopedia. She has also contributed chapters to the Routledge Companion to Pakistani Anglophone Literature (2018) and Violence in South Asia (Routledge 2019). Shazia is currently working on the manuscript of her book on human rights and Pakistani speculative fiction.

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Michael Sider, Assistant Professor, Management Communications, Ivey Business School, Western University (April 1993)
Michael Sider teaches Management Communication at the Ivey Business School. After completing his Ph.D. in English Literature at Western University under the supervision of Professor Tilottama Rajan, and a SSHRC post-doc at the University of Pennsylvania, he published The Dialogic Keats in 1998 while developing Western’s Effective Writing Program. Michael moved to Ivey in 2002, where he’s worked as a professor for the past 17 years. In 2000, Michael opened a communications consulting and executive development business that he continues to run today. The professional achievement he is proudest of is the creation of a course at Ivey that uses literature to complicate leadership. His three favourite novels (at the moment) are A Brief History of Seven Killings, Blood Meridian, and Middlemarch.

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Suvadip Sinha, Assistant Professor of South Asian Literatures and Cultures, Department of Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Minnesota (September 2014)
Suvadip Sinha received his Ph.D. (2011) for his thesis on material culture and modernity in Indian cinema. Apart from his research in the area of Indan cinema, he has also been working on 19th and 20th century South Asian literature. His current research interests include representation of ghosts, animals and machines in Indian literatures, cinema and television. His work has been published and is forthcoming in journals like Topia, Journal of South Asian Popular Culture, South Asian Film and Media and Interventions. Sinha will join the Department of Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, as an Assistant Professor in Fall 2014.

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Michael Sloane, Professor in the School of Language and Liberal Studies at Fanshawe College (September 2015)
Michael Sloane completed his PhD in English at Western in the fall of 2014 after writing his dissertation on dirty ecological objects in modern American poetry. Prior to joining the full time faculty at Fanshawe, Michael taught English courses at Western. He has published on modern and contemporary representations of waste and he is currently working on several edited book chapters.

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Alia Somani, Professor of English in Postcolonial Literature at Sheridan College (September 2015)
Alia Somani completed her PhD at Western’s Department of English and Writing Studies in 2012. Her publications have appeared in such journals as Postcolonial Text, Topia: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, and South Asian Diaspora. In addition, Alia has taught courses at various institutions including Centennial College, the University of Toronto, and Trent University. In the fall of 2015, Alia will begin a permanent full-time position as Professor of English in Postcolonial Literature at Sheridan College.

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Amy Appleford (PhD, 2005), Assistant Professor, Boston University

Anderson Araujo (PhD, 2007), Assistant Professor, UBC-Okanagan

Kofi Campbell (PhD, 2005), Associate Professor, Wilfrid Laurier University

Peter Cumming (PhD, 2003) Associate Professor, York University

Alan Galey (PhD, 2006), Assistant Professor, University of Toronto

Allison Hargreaves (PhD, 2011), Assistant Professor, UBC-Okanagan

Mark Johnston (PhD, 2004), Associate Professor, University of Windsor

Somaya Sabry (PhD 2009), Assistant Professor, Ain Shams University

Sarah Krotz (PhD, 2008), Assistant Professor, University of Alberta

Nathaniel Leach (PhD, 2005), Associate Professor, Cape Breton University

Christopher Lockett (PhD, 2005), Associate Professor, Memorial University

Kelly McGuire (PhD, 2006), Assistant Professor, Trent University

Karis Shearer (PhD, 2008), Assistant Professor, UBC-Okanagan

Andrew Moore (PhD, 2008), Associate Professor, St. Thomas University

Heather Snell (PhD, 2007), Assistant Professor, University of Winnipeg

Helene Strauss (PhD, 2006), Professor, University of the Free State (South Africa)

Margaret Toye (PhD, 2003), Associate Professor, Wilfrid Laurier University

Conrad Van Dyk (PhD, 2007), Assistant Professor, Concordia University College of Alberta

Kimberley Verwaayen (PhD, 2004) Assistant Professor, University of Western Ontario

Brian Wall (PhD, 2005), Assistant Professor, SUNY Binghamton