Judith Popova

Dr Judith Popova

 https://orcid.org/0009-0004-2583-3831

Personal profile

Overview

Judith Popova is Lecturer at the University of Hertfordshire in English Literature and Creative Writing. She formerly held positions as a Postdoctoral Researcher and Guest Lecturer at the University of Surrey, where she earned her PhD in 2022 and was awarded a fully funded Research Fellowship. Judith has presented papers on exilic literature at international interdisciplinary conferences and is an Advance HE Fellow, a member of the Association for Scottish Literature, and the Muriel Spark Society in Edinburgh, Scotland. Judith has been an editor for the University of Surrey's collobrative project with HMP Downview on Women's Prison Writing, and a peer-reviewer. Her creative publications include a collection of poetry and short stories in the Stag Hill Literary Journal and a chapter in 'Unlocking the Grid: A Documentary Novel of the Plague Year' (foreword by Iain Sinclair), published by Potential Books in 2021.

Her academic publications include: 'Subverting Literary Tradition: An Absurd Reading of The Driver's Seat (1970)’ (forthcoming) in Scottish Literary Review, Spring/Summer 2026, and ‘The Western Gaze and the Eastern European Refugee in Muriel Spark’s Territorial Rights (1979)’ published in MFS Modern Fiction Studies, Volume 71, Number 2, Summer 2025 - https://muse.jhu.edu/article/963546.

Judith's forthcoming monograph titled Exile in Muriel Spark’s Fiction: Literary Castaways, Émigrés, Expatriates, Nomads and Refugees will be published by Edinburgh University Press in 2026.

 

Teaching specialisms

Judith has taught, acted as a supervisor and module leader on undergraduate and postgraduate modules at UK Universities in nineteenth-century literature, contemporary literature, creative writing, screenwriting, game writing, children's literature, early modern literature, research and employability skills. At the University of Hertfordshire she has taught modules: Euro-Crime on Page and Screen; American Literature to 1900; Employability Skills; Border Crossing Modern Literature from around the World; American Voices: Introduction to US Literature and Culture; Texts Up Close Reading and Interpretation; Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature 1900-1945; Ways of Reading Literature and Theory; Age of Transition the Victorians and Modernity; Twentieth-Century US Literature and Culture.

Education/Academic qualification

English Literature, PhD, Versions of the Female Stranger: Muriel Spark's Preoccupation with Exile, University of Surrey

2018 → 2022

English Literature, MA, University of Surrey

2016 → 2018

Liberal Arts with a Major in English, BA, HEI: King's College London

2013 → 2016