Jesse Astley

Thesis title: Memorialising AIDS: Queer Anthologies and Poetic Communities In Britain, 1981-1994

Supervisor: Professor Santanu Das

Research interests: Queer poetics; HIV/AIDS; contemporary poetry; illness narratives; gender and sexuality; mourning and grief. 

Doctoral Research: I explore the poetic, publishing and archival networks which formed in response to the first wave of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the UK, focussing especially on poetry collections published between 1981-1994. I consider these texts as sites of community building and materialisations of the networks of queer kinship and care that emerged out of the crisis.