Writing against the expulsive environment

In this talk, David Herd will consider the shift in the UK’s political landscape from a Hostile Environment to what should now be called an Expulsive Environment. 

He discusses the way the policy of indefinite immigration detention features in this changing environment and how such expulsive practices can be countered. His talk will draw on his new book Writing Against Expulsion in the Post-War World: Making Space for the Human (Oxford University Press, 2023) and on his work with the Refugee Tales project.

About the speaker

David Herd is a poet, critic and co-organiser of the project Refugee Tales. His most recent collection of poetry, Walk Song (2022), was a Book of the Year in the Australian Review of Books. His critical history, Writing Against Expulsion in the Post-War World: Making Space for the Human was published by Oxford University Press in September 2023. In collaboration with Anna Pincus and colleagues at Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group, he has co-organised Refugee Tales since 2014. 

Through that work he has helped articulate the call for a future without detention. He is currently Co-Investigator on the AHRC project ‘Archive of Solidarity: Precarity, Creativity and Shared Future-Making across Closed Borders’ (PI Dr Ozlem Biner, SOAS) and was Principal Investigator on the British Academy project ‘Hostile Environments: Polices, Stories, Responses’ from 2019-2022. He is Professor of English at the University of St Andrews where his work is at the intersection of literature and human rights.

Organised by the Centre for Migration and Diaspora Studies