Dr Lucy Evans

My current research focuses on prison poetry and theatre, and creative responses to incarceration. I have a research background in Caribbean literary studies, in the use of arts-based methods, and in international and interdisciplinary collaboration.

I am a co-investigator on an international research project, Prisons, Drugs and Mental Health: an Interdisciplinary Global Study (2025-30), funded by the Wellcome Trust. I am leading the arts-based methods strand of this project, working with researchers, creative practitioners, NGOs and prison services in Guyana, Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Mauritius and Seychelles.

I previously led an AHRC-funded international research project, Representing gender-based violence: literature, performance and activism in the Anglophone Caribbean (2021-24), collaborating with Caribbean-based researchers and NGO partners to develop strategies for using spoken word poetry and theatre in gender-based violence prevention initiatives.

My past research explored literary representations of crime and violence in the Caribbean. I am the author of Crime Fiction in the Caribbean: Reframing Crime and Justice (Oxford University Press, 2024), the first academic book to focus on crime fiction by anglophone Caribbean writers.

I am currently co-investigator on an international research project Prisons, Drugs and Mental Health: an Interdisciplinary Global Study (2025-30), funded by the Wellcome Trust. This project is a collaboration between the University of Leicester, the University of the West Indies, the University of Guyana, and the NGO Le Chantier in Mauritius. It combines work in historical archives with interviews, focus groups, surveys, and creative methods in order to explore experiences of drugs cultures, mental health and incarceration in Guyana, Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Mauritius and Seychelles. I am leading the arts-based methods strand of this project, working with researchers, creative practitioners, NGOs, and prison services in these countries to organise creative programmes for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people. Focusing on various art forms – including written and spoken word poetry, theatre, radio drama, visual art, and music – these creative programmes will enable participants to reflect on their experiences, explore and share their perspectives, and get their voices heard within and beyond prison communities. 

I previously led an international research project, Representing gender-based violence: literature, performance and activism in the Anglophone Caribbean, funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (2021-24), working with an interdisciplinary team of researchers in Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and the UK. We analysed representations of gender-based violence in contemporary fiction, poetry, and popular music, and we worked with writers to generate new creative material on this topic (I co-edited, with Shivanee Ramlochan, Unstitching Silence: Fiction and Poetry by Caribbean Writers on Gender-based Violence, published by Peekash Press in 2025). We also collaborated with secondary schools and youth-oriented NGOs to develop a creative methodology for gender-based violence prevention work. Our project enabled the young people who participated to deepen their understanding of gender-based violence and speak out against it. I worked with the project team and partners to produce an open-access resource for teachers and youth programme facilitators, GBV Education for Youth: a Caribbean Arts-based Facilitation Guide.  

This project emerged out of a broader international and interdisciplinary research networking project that I led in collaboration with Anthony Harriott (University of the West Indies) on Crime and its Representation in the Anglophone Caribbean, 1834-2018, funded by the British Academy (2016-19). The project brought social science researchers into dialogue with arts and humanities researchers, and involved over 40 network members from Europe and across the Caribbean region. As an outcome of this project, I co-edited a special issue of the Caribbean Journal of Criminology and co-founded the ongoing University of the West Indies, University of Leicester and University of Alberta International Summer Institute, an annual week-long global studies programme for postgraduate students and early career researchers. I also wrote a book, Crime Fiction in the Caribbean: Reframing Crime and Justice (Oxford University Press, 2024).

Books and edited collections

Co-editor, with Shivanee Ramlochan, Unstitching Silence: Fiction and Poetry by Caribbean Writers on Gender-based Violence (Peekash Press, 2025).

Crime Fiction in the Caribbean: Reframing Crime and Justice (Oxford University Press, 2024)

Guest Editor, with Rivke Jaffe, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 22:1 (2020), special Issue: ‘Representing Crime, Violence and Jamaica’.

Guest Editor, with Dylan Kerrigan, Caribbean Journal of Criminology, 4:1 (2019), special Issue: ‘Crime, Gender and Sexuality in the Anglophone Caribbean: Interdisciplinary Perspectives’.

Communities in Contemporary Anglophone Caribbean Short Stories (Liverpool University Press, 2014).

Guest Editor, with Mandala White, Moving Worlds: A Journal of Transcultural Writings, 13:1 (2013), special Issue: Crime Across Cultures.

Guest Editor, with Mandala White, Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 47:2 (2012), symposium: Crime Narratives and Global Politics.

Co-editor, with Mark McWatt and Emma Smith, The Caribbean Short Story: Critical Perspectives (Peepal Tree Press, 2011).

Journal articles and book chapters

With Kelsi Delaney, ‘“Here are the stories underneath”: Representing Gender-based Violence in Contemporary Jamaican Poetry’, in Gender Based Violence in the Caribbean: Historical Roots, Contemporary Continuities, ed. by Dalea Bean and Verene Shepherd (University of the West Indies Press, 2025). https://www.uwipress.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Chapter-12-OA.pdf

With Gabrielle Jamela Hosein, ‘Using Spoken Word and Theatre in Gender-based Violence Education with Adolescents in Trinidad and Tobago’. Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, June 2025, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/13569783.2025.2513610

“Tidal Poetics in Dionne Brand’s At the Full and Change of the Moon”, in Propagules: Essays on Dionne Brand’s Works, ed. by Titilola Aiyegbusi and Mark A. McCutcheon (Guernica, forthcoming 2026; reprint of 2009 article in the Caribbean Quarterly).

‘Representations of White Collar Crime in the Caribbean’, in Organised Crime, Financial Crime and Criminal Justice: Theoretical Concepts and Challenges, ed. by Dan Jasinski, Amber Phillips and Ed Johnston (Routledge, 2023) 

With Rivke Jaffe, ‘Imagining infrastructure in urban Jamaica’, GeoHumanities, 8:1 (2022), 17-32. https://doi.org/10.1080/2373566X.2021.1925575

‘“How Godfather Part II of You”: The Gangster Figure and Transnational Masculinities in Marlon James’s A Brief History of Seven Killings’, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 22:1 (2020), 49-70.

With Rivke Jaffe, ‘Introduction: Representing Crime, Violence and Jamaica’, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 22:1 (2020), 1-7.

‘Domestic Noir in Trinidad: Elizabeth Nunez’ Bruised Hibiscus’, Caribbean Journal of Criminology, 4:1 (2019), 155-183.

With Dylan Kerrigan, ‘Introduction: Crime, Gender and Sexuality in the Anglophone Caribbean’, Caribbean Journal of Criminology, 4:1 (2019), 1-28.

'Regionalism and the Short Story', in The Edinburgh Companion to the Short Story in English, ed. by Paul Delaney and Adrian Hunter (Edinburgh University Press, 2018), pp. 227-241.

With Mandala White, ‘Introduction: Crime Narratives and Global Politics’, Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 47:2 (2012), 139-143.

'Reinventing the Badman in Jamaican Fiction and Film', in Constructing Crime: Discourse and Cultural Representations of Crime and 'Deviance', ed. by Christiana Gregoriou ( Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 162-176.

'Local and Global Reading Communities in Robert Antoni's My Grandmother's Erotic Folktales', in Postcolonial Audiences: Readers, Viewers and Reception, ed. by Bethan Benwell, James Procter and Gemma Robinson (Routledge, 2012), pp. 140-153.

'A Kind of Chain: Reworking the Short Story Sequence in V.S. Naipaul's A Way in the World', in The Caribbean Short Story: Critical Perspectives, ed. by Lucy Evans, Mark McWatt and Emma Smith (Leeds: Peepal Tree, 2011), pp. 284-297.

'Introduction', in The Caribbean Short Story: Critical Perspectives, ed. by Lucy Evans, Mark McWatt and Emma Smith (Peepal Tree, 2011), pp. 11-25.

'Introduction', in Mark McWatt, Interiors (Caribbean Press, 2010), pp. 1-6.

'Tidal Poetics in Dionne Brand's At the Full and Change of the Moon', Caribbean Quarterly, 55:3 (2009), 1-19.

'"Free to Come to Grief": The Problems of Formal Freedom in Mark McWatt's Suspended Sentences', Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 44:3 (2009), 33-49.

'Questioning Black Identity: Strategies of Digression in E.A. Markham's Meet Me in Mozambique', Moving Worlds, 9:2 (2009), 125-136.

'The Black Atlantic: Exploring Gilroy's Legacy', Atlantic Studies, 6:2 (2009), 225-268.

Interviews

'An Interview with Lawrence Scott', Moving Worlds, 11:1 (2011), 93-103.

'Re-encountering Guyana: An Interview with Mark McWatt', The Arts Journal: Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Literature, History, Art and Culture of Guyana and the Caribbean, 5:1-2 (2009), 57-68.

'An Interview with Opal Palmer Adisa', Moving Worlds, 7:2 (2007), 66-76.

Teaching resource

Co-editor, GBV Education for Youth: A Caribbean Arts-Based Facilitation Guide 

I have supervised ten PhD projects to successful completion, and am currently supervising four PhD projects. Past and current students have worked on topics such as representations of matrifocality in contemporary Caribbean fiction, the cultural politics of form in contemporary Caribbean poetry, the pastoral mode in Derek Walcott’s poetry, representations of Indigenous women in cultural texts set in British Guiana/Guyana, mixedness in contemporary Guyanese writing, and queer literary resistance in contemporary Anglophone Caribbean writing. 

I would be interested in supervising PhD research on Caribbean literature and contemporary global literatures. I would also welcome enquiries about PhD research relating to prisons and to gender-based violence. 

Undergraduate Teaching

• EN1010 Reading Poetry (Convenor)
• EN1020 The Novel Around the World
• EN2060 Critical Perspectives 1 (Convenor)
• EN2192 Global Voices and the Publishing Industry (Convenor)
• EN3340 Contemporary Literature
• EN3010 Dissertation

Postgraduate Teaching

• EN7141 Literature and the Environment: Global Eco-Fiction (Convenor)
• EN7252 Twenty-First Century Fiction
• EN7033 Critical Dissertation 

BA in English, University of Leeds

MA in Twentieth-Century Literature, University of Leeds

PhD in Caribbean Literature, University of Leeds

Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice in Higher Education, University of Leicester

Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy