Hannah Boast
Chancellor's Fellow
- English Literature
- School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures
Contact details
- Email: hannah.boast@ed.ac.uk
Availability
My office/drop-in hour for autumn 2025 is Thursday 12.30-1.30. Please email to let me know if you plan to attend.
Background
I joined University of Edinburgh as Chancellor's Fellow in June 2023. I was previously Lecturer/Assistant Professor and Ad Astra Fellow at University College Dublin, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at University of Warwick, and Teaching Fellow in Contemporary and Postcolonial Literature at University of Birmingham. I have also taught at University of York. In 2022, I held a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science short-term fellowship at Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo.
My academic background is in Geography and English. The focus of my research is water in modern and contemporary world literature. My current projects examine literature from the UK, Canada, India, South Africa, and other countries. I am interested in literary and cultural representations of water crisis and drought; water infrastructure, technology and the state, especially dams, reservoirs, and hydroelectricity; waste, sewage, and Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH); and alternative hydrosocial futures. My second main interest is environmental politics and culture in Palestine/Israel, including water, waste, food, agriculture, and the environmental impacts of war and occupation. These two sets of interests formed the subject of my first book, Hydrofictions: Water, Power and Politics in Israeli and Palestinian Literature (Edinburgh University Press, 2020), which was shortlisted for the ASLE-UKI Book Prize 2021 and reviewed in a number of journals internationally. I also publish in critical animal studies. As well as writing about contemporary literature, I sometimes work on visual arts, with interests in nature documentary and environmental popular culture.
My research has been funded by the AHRC Curiosity scheme, the Leverhulme Trust, Institute for Human Geography, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, British Academy and Royal Irish Academy Knowledge Frontiers Programme, Scottish Graduate School for the Arts and Humanities, White Rose Universities Consortium, and competitive internal funding schemes at UCD and University of York.
Qualifications
PhD English and Related Literatures, University of York and Geography, University of Sheffield. Funded by White Rose Universities Consortium
MA Cultures of Empire, Resistance and Postcoloniality, English and Related Literatures, University of York
BA (Jt Hons) English Studies and Philosophy, University of Nottingham
Responsibilities & affiliations
Lead Judge, James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction
Coordinator, 'How to Read a Novel', James Tait Black MOOC
Associate Editor, Environmental Humanities journal
Advisory Board Member, C21 Literature: Journal of 21st-century Writings
Co-convener, Edinburgh Environmental Humanities Network (EEHN)
Member, Edinburgh Academic Freedom and Freedom of Expression Working Group
Mentor, Education Beyond Borders, University of Edinburgh
Affiliate, Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI)
Affiliate, Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH)
Member, Association for the Study of Literature and Environment UK and Ireland (ASLE-UKI)
Member, British Association for the Study of Contemporary Literature (BACLS)
Undergraduate teaching
In 2025/26 I will be teaching on Reading Theory and Literary Studies 2B, and supervising undergraduate dissertations.
My honours module Water and World Literature is not running in 2025/26.
Postgraduate teaching
In 2025/26 I will be teaching on the Comparative Literature core course across both semesters, and supervising MSc dissertations.
Open to PhD supervision enquiries?
Yes
Areas of interest for supervision
I welcome PhD proposals in my areas of interest, which include postcolonial and world literature, Environmental Humanities, Palestinian and Israeli literatures, and critical animal studies. Within Environmental Humanities, I am most interested in projects that use a world-ecology, world-systems or eco-Marxist perspective, and/or engage with modern and contemporary postcolonial and world literature. I am also interested in supervising projects in the intersection between literary studies and cultural geography, including projects that are purely or primarily theoretical.
Current PhD students supervised
Shaimaa Abulebda, 'Contemporary Palestinian Speculative Fiction in the Anglophone Literary Marketplace'. Funded by a SGSAH Collaborative Doctoral Award, in partnership with Comma Press. Co-supervised with Will Tattersdill (Glasgow), Claire Squires (Stirling) and Ra Page (Comma Press).
Tasneem Yousef, 'Palestine is a Futurism: Speculative Poetics in Palestinian Writing'. Co-supervised with Ebtihal Mahadeen (IMES).
Past PhD students supervised
Deborah Schrijvers (UCD), 'Decolonizing Extinction: Intersections of Race, Gender, and Species in Contemporary Art and Literature', funded by Ad Astra scholarship
Poulomi Choudhury (UCD), 'Fleshy Food Resources of the Future', funded by Irish Research Council scholarship and College Doctoral Fee Scholarship
Previously a member of three PhD progression panels at UCD.
Research summary
My research focuses on the politics and culture of water. I am currently writing a book called Water Crisis and World Literature. This project has been supported by a UCD Ad Astra Fellowship, a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship and a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science fellowship, among other funding schemes, and I have published various articles deriving from it. I am also working on a number of writing projects about environmental issues in Palestine/Israel.
My work is broadly concerned with the stories we tell about nature and society, including who and what is seen as natural, or as acting on behalf of nature. I am interested in how claims of environmental concern and commitment are mobilised in support of different and often wildly varying political ends, and in how to reshape environmental politics towards more emancipatory and transformative goals.
My first book, Hydrofictions: Water, Power and Politics in Israeli and Palestinian Literature, was published by Edinburgh University Press in 2020. It was shortlisted for the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment UK and Ireland (ASLE-UKI) Book Prize 2021 for Best Academic Monograph in Ecocriticism and the Environmental Humanities.
I have work published or forthcoming on environmental politics in the Palestine solidarity movement; water, waste and war in contemporary Palestinian literature; rivers in the contemporary Canadian long poem; water and the energy humanities; the history of public toilets in the UK; the risks of a feminist politics focused on the figure of the killjoy; the promises and limitations of Sylvia Federici's political thought; gay frog memes, far-right environmental culture, and the environmental politics of humour; the Netflix show Tiger King and the history of nature documentaries (with Nicole Seymour); women IDF soldiers in popular culture; water justice in the work of Canadian poet Rita Wong; the River Jordan in contemporary Palestinian writing; trees, forests and environmental policy in Israeli literature.
A list of publications can be found on Edinburgh Research Explorer: https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/en/persons/hannah-boast. Please email me if you want to read any of my work and don't have institutional access.
Project activity
Water Crisis and World Literature: a monograph and articles published or forthcoming in Textual Practice, Interventions, Humanities and New Socialist. I'm currently writing up two pieces on these themes from my JSPS fellowship in Tokyo. The first is an article for a public audience on the Tokyo Toilet Project. The second is an academic article on the writer-activist Ishimure Michiko, a key figure in the campaign for justice for Minamata Disease victims and a critic of twentieth-century Japanese environmental policy.
I am working on a number of projects on Environmental Humanities in Palestine/Israel, which put two fields into dialogue that still largely exist separately. My work thinks about how environmental frames reshape dominant perceptions of the Palestinian struggle and how consideration of environmental issues in a Palestine/Israel context challenges theoretical and political assumptions in Environmental Humanities. I outline what I call the 'environmental turn' in Palestinian arts, culture, policy and activism in a new article for Environment and Planning E (2025), by way of a reading of Jumana Manna's film Foragers. I am developing these themes in a new article on governing animal life in Palestinian film. I was recently awarded an Institute for Human Geography IHG grant for a related project, 'Palestinian women, cooperative agriculture and land-based struggle, 1967-2005', with Co-Is Saad Amira and Samer Raddad (Al Quds Bard College), which studies how women in the West Bank balanced agricultural practices and social reproduction after the Israeli occupation.
I am Co-I on the AHRC Curiosity Award 'The Many Lives of Cardboard', with Co-I Antonia Thomas (University of Highlands and Islands) and PI Lucy Razzall (The National Archives). This project is funded from Jan 2026 to Apr 2027, and investigates the hidden histories of this multifaceted material across environmental, creative and heritage sectors.
I am regularly involved in public initiatives about Palestinian arts, environment, and educational policy, in the UK and internationally. I am happy to be approached for comment about my research areas, including the cultural politics of water and environment, from public toilets to wild swimming; Palestinian and Israeli arts and culture; or my role as Lead Judge of the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction, the UK's joint oldest literary prize.
Current project grants
2026: AHRC Curiosity Award, 'The Lifecycles of Cardboard', with Lucy Razzall (The National Archives) and Antonia Thomas (University of Highlands and Islands)
2025: SGSAH Collaborative Doctoral Award, 'Palestinian Speculative Fiction in the Anglophone Literary Marketplace', with co-supervisors Claire Squires (Stirling), Will Tattersdill (Glasgow), and Ra Page (Comma Press)
2024: Institute for Human Geography IHG Grant, 'Palestinian women, cooperative agriculture & land-based struggle, 1967-2005', with Saad Amira and Samer Raddad (Al Quds Bard College)
Past project grants
2023: British Academy and Royal Irish Academy Seed Funding, ‘Baby Boxes to Beige Gold: Cardboard Lifecycles’, with Lucy Razzall (The National Archives) and Antonia Thomas (University of Highlands and Islands).
2023: British Academy and Royal Irish Academy Seed Funding, ‘The Apocalyptic Quotidian’, with Daniel Abdalla (Liverpool), Sarah Bezan (UCC), Jade French (Loughborough), Kasia Mika-Bresolin (QMUL), Lucy Razzall (TNA), Antonia Thomas (UHI).
2023: British Academy and Royal Irish Academy Seed Funding, ‘Irish Peatlands: Hydrofictions and Hydrofutures’, with Rosie Everett (Northumbria)
2023: British Academy and Royal Irish Academy Knowledge Frontiers Symposium: The Future
2022: Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Short-term Fellowship, 'Shared Exposures, Chemical Worlds', Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo
2021: College Funding for Research Activity, UCD
2019: UCD Ad Astra Fellowship (tenure-track position, with five-year start-up grant)
2019: Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship (three-year fellowship)
2016: Humanities Research Centre Postdoctoral Fellowship, University of York
2014: Postcolonial Studies Association Conference Grant, for PSA biennial PG and ECR conference, ‘Resources of Resistance: Production, Consumption, Transformation’.
2014: Centre for Modern Studies Grant, University of York, for 'Resources of Resistance'
2013-2015: Coordinator for the AHRC-funded research network, 'Imagining Jerusalem, c. 1099 to the Present Day'
2013: F. R. Leavis Travel Grant, University of York
2013: Humanities Research Centre Grant, University of York, for ‘Social Water, an interdisciplinary postgraduate workshop'
2012, 2013 and 2014: three Off the Shelf Festival of Words Community Grants, for talks on feminist history and politics
2011: White Rose Doctoral Studentship, University of York and University of Sheffield