Fellow in Focus: Dr Georgie Horrell

FEATURE FELLOW IN FOCUS

Dr Georgie Horrell

Dr Georgie Horrell is Director of Studies in Education and College Teaching Officer in Literatures in English and Education. In 2019 she also took on the role of Admissions Tutor.

How long have you been at Homerton? I joined around 15 years ago, having just completed my PhD in postcolonial literatures (southern African writing) at New Hall (now Murray Edwards). I started by giving a small number of supervisions for the Education Tripos and teaching the Education Faculty’s International Literatures paper. I gradually took on more and more teaching, became a Tutor, Kate Pretty (Homerton Principal 1991–2013) offered me a Director of Studies role and eventually I became a Fellow. I sort of crept into Homerton life, step by step!

What do you think is special and unique about it as a College? In my experience it has always been a wonderfully collegiate, supportive and empowering place to work – remarkably inclusive – where people are encouraged to be themselves.

Is teaching literature as part of the Education Tripos different from how you would approach it in an English degree? Within the Education Tripos there has always been a strong strand of English, Drama and the Arts. The Tripos is wholly inter-disciplinary and many students end up thoroughly engrossed by the English and Drama elements, as well as by the sociological, historical and psychological aspects of the degree.

The approach to teaching literature on the Education Tripos is very similar to that for the English Tripos, but it sits in a different context. This means that some aspects of literary studies – like Children’s Literature for example – are foregrounded. While I’ve been at Homerton, the relationship between the College and the Faculty of Education has been through an interesting, evolutionary process. Of course we still have the Children’s Literature Centre shared by the College and the Faculty.

This is your first year as Admissions Tutor. How does that fit with your other commitments? As a Director of Studies, I’ve become increasingly inspired by ‘widening participation’. The best aspect of my job in academia has always been about working with students: I’ve always been very aware of the enormous privilege of hearing from extraordinary young minds, and I would like to think I have embraced the responsibility of playing a role in helping to shape their present and their future.

As I was thinking of applying for the Admissions Tutor role, I had a letter from a student saying how much it had meant to her during her interview that I had been kind. No one had encouraged her to apply; in fact she’d been actively discouraged by her parents and teachers: they had said that ‘girls like her didn’t come to Cambridge’. She reminded me that during her interview she’d asked me to explain a line in the poem we were discussing which she didn’t understand. Once I’d explained it, she just took off! This student finished her degree with a starred First for her final dissertation. Her letter confirmed for me that I wanted to be more directly involved in Admissions.

I absolutely relish being involved in so many aspects of College. This particular role allows me to explore ways that we might move towards improving equitable participation in higher education, and has enhanced the other roles I already had in College life. This August will be my first results day as Admissions Tutor and given that the ‘usual’ exams haven’t actually been taken, this will be baptism by very strange fire.

What are your current research interests? Having recently worked on the Caribbean Poetry Project and led ZAPP, the South African Poetry Project, I’m now involved with a wonderful network of people interested in the ways children interact with poetry. I’m collaborating on an international project exploring poetry in performance.

I’m also interested in postcolonial ecocriticism in relation to children’s literature. I did my undergraduate degree in Cape Town, having (partly) grown up there, and also taught in South Africa before doing my PhD. I’ve been interested in looking at literatures in English from a postcolonial perspective for most of my academic career.

I particularly appreciate Homerton’s association with the Cambridge Children’s Literature Centre, and it’s exciting to have the opportunity to explore a wide range of research interests in this way. I’m hoping to continue to play a role in building on the brilliant foundation put in place by Professor Morag Styles.

Students have been very responsive to the growth of the Black Lives Matter movement. Do you think there’s more that the College should be doing? Yes. It is vital that we as a College actively address the concerns that the movement has raised again recently. For example, I’ve spent a year as the College Discrimination and Harassment Contact. It’s particularly important that we expand this role to include BAME representatives – indeed to have many more diverse voices across the College. Homerton is already a progressive, diverse and inclusive space – but together we can do more and we can do better in this regard. Dr Georgie Horrell’s research interests are postcolonial and ecocritical approaches to children’s literature, as well as poetry for young people. Her publications include a co-edited anthology of Caribbean poetry for young people, Give the Ball to the Poet (Georgie Horrell, Aisha Spencer and Morag Styles, 2014) and articles on South African and Caribbean literature and Children’s Literature (amongst which: ‘Transgression and Transition’ in The Emergent Adult Ashgate, 2012).