Academic interests
My research encompasses the overlapping fields of Australian literature, children's literature, and ecocritism. Within these areas, I'm particularly interested in critical plant studies, poetry, material ecocriticism, receptions of the past, and Indigenous literature. I am joint leader of the research group Literature and Narrativity.
I have co-edited two anthologies and one special issue of a journal on the topic of plants in children's and young adult literature: Plants in Children's and Young Adult Literature (Routledge 2022), Storying Plants in Australian Children's and Young Adult Literature: Roots and Winged Seeds (Palgrave 2023), and Plant Tendrils in Children's and Young Adult Literature, a special issue of ecozon@, 2024. An anthology with broader scope, Narratives of Hope and Despair: Ruin and Regeneration in Literature and Culture, edited together with Johanna M. Wagner and Deanna Benjamin, was published Routledge in October 2025. I am currently working on the biography of South Australian children's writer Christobel Mattingley.
Recent and Forthcoming Publications
D'Arcens, Louise and Melanie Duckworth. "Arthurianism in Australia." In The Cambridge History of Arthurian Literature and Culture, vol 2, edited by Andrew Lynch and Raluca Radulescu, pp. 346-366. Cambridge University Press, 2026. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009031684.018
Duckworth, Melanie. "Re-storying Plants: Plants as Friends, Metaphors, and Community in Trace Balla's Landing with Wings." In Children's Literature, Cultures and Pedagogies in the Anthropocene: Multidisciplinary Entanglements, edited by Terri Doughty, Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak and Janet Grafton. Bloomsbury, 2025. DOI: 10.5040/9781350510005.ch-6
Duckworth, Melanie. "Animal Voices in the Apocalypse: The Animals in That Country and The Ghost of the Cock." In Narratives of Hope and Despair: Ruin and Regeneration in Literature and Culture, edited by Johanna M. Wagner, Melanie Duckworth and Deanna Benjamin. Routledge, 2025.
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 master's theses on topics including: gender in Harry Potter, The Hobbit and fanfiction, environmental picturebooks, intercultural communication and Indigenous literature, Avatar - The Last Airbender and social justice, sustainability in ESL text books, perceptions of film in the ESL classroom, oral participation in the ESL classroom, and the use of poetry in the ESL classroom.
Background
I am an 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 was 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