Heather Ray Milligan joined 海角社区 University as a Vice-Chancellor Independent Research Fellow in May 2025. Her research interests span modern and contemporary literature, the environmental and energy humanities, gender studies and queer theory, settler-colonial and Indigenous studies, and social movement studies.
Academic Career
- Vice-Chancellor Independent Research Fellow, 海角社区 University, May 2025–April 2027
- PhD English Literature, University of Edinburgh (Thesis: ‘The Contemporary Ecogothic Novel: Time, Intimacy, Affect, Form’), 2020–2024
- MSt English (1900–present) with Distinction, University of Oxford, 2018–2019
- MA (Hons) English Literature, First Class, University of Edinburgh, 2014–2018
Selected Awards
- Carnegie Trust PhD Scholarship (2020–2024)
- The Cross Trust Award, Scottish International Education Trust Award, McGlashan Trust Postgraduate Grant & Burns Shearer Award, and The Acorn Trust Award for postgraduate studies at Oxford (2018–2019)
- David Masson Scholarship, University of Edinburgh (2018)
- Santander Travel Award for climate research in the US (2018)
Heather’s research specialises in contemporary literature, ecocriticism, and American culture.
She is currently writing a monograph entitled Ecogothic America and the Twenty-First-Century Novel, forthcoming with Edinburgh University Press. The book makes the case that ecogothic fiction is now a major genre of American literature shaped by some of the nation’s most celebrated authors, including Jesmyn Ward, Hanya Yanagihara, Stephen Graham Jones, Jeff VanderMeer, Helena María Viramontes, and K-Ming Chang. Ecogothic America charts a changing role for the American Gothic in the twenty-first century: one that increasingly critiques and ‘writes back’ to imperial violence and ecophobia. The book also identifies the ecogothic’s contributions to ecocritical theory, challenging dominant ideas in the field around porosity, entanglement, and positive affect.
Heather’s second major research project will investigate the relationship between contemporary literature and eco-activism. She will explore how cultural forms can help us to better understand the challenges of climate change, and when and why fiction can persuade people to engage in political action. Her project will curate an original history of eco-activism in mainstream culture to better understand how fiction influences activism and its suppression.
Book
- Ecogothic America and the Twenty-First-Century Novel, under contract with Edinburgh University Press.
Articles
- ‘Contemporary Oil Fiction: From Exuberance to Exhaustion’, Modern Fiction Studies 72:3, forthcoming Autumn 2026.
- 'Against Entanglement’, Provocations essay, American Gothic Studies 1:1 (2025): 120–127, .
- ‘The Queer Time of Ecogothic’, Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism 28:4 (2024): 273–284, .
- ‘How to Blow Up a Novel: Pipeline Insurgency and Narrative Form in Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria’, Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 66:2 (2023): 217–231, .
Book Reviews
- ‘The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgaard’, Gothic Nature 4 (2023): 265–268, .
- ‘Transecology: Transgender Perspectives on Environment and Nature by Douglas Vakoch (ed.)’, Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism 27:1–2 (2023): 260–262, .
Media
‘How Fiction Makes Sense of the Crisis’, podcast interview with Planet: Critical, January 2026, .