Academic interests
My research encompasses the overlapping fields of Australian literature, children's literature, and ecocritism. Within these areas, I'm particularly interested in poetry, receptions of the past, Indigenous literature, and critical plant studies.
My co-edited (with Lykke Guanio-Uluru) volume Plants in Children's and Young Adult Literature was published in Routledge's Perspectives on the Non-human in Literature and Culture series in 2022. A new volume (co-edited with Annika Herb) entitled Storying Plants in Australian Children's and Young Adult Literature: Roots and Winged Seeds has just been published in Palgrave's Critical Approaches to Children's Literature series. I am currently working on the biography of South Australian children's writer Christobel Mattingley.
Recent and Forthcoming Publications
Duckworth, Melanie. "The Voice of the Sheoak: Vegetal Poetics and Hope in Kirli Saunders' Verse Novel Bindi" in Storying Plants in Australian Children's and Young Adult Literature: Roots and Winged Seeds, edited by Melanie Duckworth and Annika Herb. Palgrave, 2023.
Duckworth, Melanie and Aidan Coleman. "Last Migrations: The Poetry of Migratory Birds." Poetry and the Global Climate Crisis: Educational Creative Approaches to Complex Challenges, edited by Angela Sorby, Amatoritsero Ede and Sandra Kleppe. Routledge, 2023.
Duckworth, Melanie. "“Maralinga the Anangu Story: Country, Multimodality, and Living Space.” In Children’s Literature in Place: Surveying the Landscapes of Children’s Culture. Edited by Željka Flegar and Jennifer Miskec. Routledge, 2024.
Kennedy, Nicole and Melanie Duckworth. "Vegetal Memory, Community, and Power in Ambelin Kwaymullina’s The Tribe Trilogy" in Storying Plants in Australian Children's and Young Adult Literature: Roots and Winged Seeds, edited by Melanie Duckworth and Annika Herb. Palgrave, 2023.
For more publications, see below.
Courses taught
I teach classes on topics including: British literature and culture, postcolonial literature, theory and methodology, literature and the environment, critical analysis, and narrative texts in the classroom. I have supervised masters theses on topics including: gender in Harry Potter, the Hobbit and fanfiction, environmental picturebooks, intercultural communication and Indigenous literature, and the use of poetry in the English as a foreign language classroom.
Background
I am a settler Australian of British descent who grew up on Kaurna and Boandik lands in South Australia. I have a Bachelor of Arts with Honours from the University of Adelaide, a Masters in Medieval English Literatures from the University of York, and a PhD in English Literature from the University of Leeds, on the topic of "Medievalism and the Langauge of Belonging in Selected Works of Les Murray, Randolph Stow, Francis Webb and Kevin Hart." I have been living in Norway since 2009, and teaching at Østfold Univeristy College since 2013. In 2022 I was a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Adelaide. In January to April 2024 I am a Research Fellow at the National Library of Australia, Canberra, researching the topic "Christobel Mattingley: Life, Worlds, Words".
Partners
Member of ASLE, IRSCL, ASAL and EASCLE