As a literary scholar, I specialize in contemporary modernist, experimental and “weird” fiction, and the aftermaths of economic and environmental crisis.
Please cite my work as “Ward Sell, Aran”, not “Sell, Aran Ward”
From 2024-2026 I am W. B. Yeats Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, USA.
My PhD is from the University of Edinburgh
Academic Publications:
Review: Narratives of the Ujnspoken in Contemporary Irish Fiction, edited by M. Teresa Caneda-Cabrera and José Carregal-Romero. Irish Studies Review, 2024.
‘Post-catastrophic Irelands in contemporary fiction,’ Irish Studies Review, special issue on Irish Capitalism, 2024.
‘Even Better than the Real Thing: a conceptual history of the “Celtic Phoenix”’ Irish Studies Review, special issue on the Celtic Phoenix, 2023.
‘Hardly Working: eliding remunerative labour in recent Irish women’s fiction,’ Irish Studies Review, Vol. 31:1, pp16-33. Special issue on Irish Women’s Writing and Work, Jan 2023.
‘From the Ashes: The Celtic Phoenix, Anna Burns’ Milkman and Sally Rooney’s Normal People,’ Alluvium, Vol. 9, No. 1 (2021), March 2021.
‘Half-Formed Modernism: Eimear McBride’s A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing’ – HJEAS: The Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies, Dec 2019.
‘The Politics of 21st-century Modernism in Malarky and Martin John by Anakana Schofield’ – C21: Journal of 21st-Century Writings. Spring 2018.
‘The War on Terro[i]r: Biology as (unstable) geography in Jeff VanderMeer’s ‘Southern Reach’ trilogy’ – Antae. Feb 2018.
Forthcoming:
- Proposed monograph “Streams of Damaged Consciousness”
Conferences:
Forthcoming: ““Deranged Prophets’ Songs: The contemporary Irish novelist as soothsayer of disaster”. Modern Language Association, New Orleans (USA), “Irish Truth-tellers”, January 2025.
“Titus Failed: Titus Alone and the eerie fall of Gormenghast”. “British Literature and the Art of Failure”, University of Notre Dame in London (UK), August 2024.
“And Is Only Raining: Post-Catastrophic Irelands in Contemporary Fiction”. American Conference for Irish Studies, Mary Immaculate College, Limerick (Ireland), June 2024.
“And Is Only Raining: Post-Catastrophic Irelands in Contemporary Fiction”. Canadian Association for Irish Studies, University of Galway (Ireland), June 2024.
“A Third Way: Beatlebone and Metamodernism” — “Innovation and Experiment in Contemporary Irish Fiction”, KU Leuven (Belgium), Nov-Dec 2018. Read my review of the 2018 Irish Studies conference at KU Leuven in The Modernist Review here.
“Half-Formed Modernism: Eimear McBride and the post-crash resurgence of Irish literary modernism” — British Association of Modernist Studies, “New Work in Modernist Studies”, University of Leeds (UK), December 2017.
“The War on Terro[i]r: Biology as (unstable) geography in Jeff VanderMeer’s ‘Southern Reach’ trilogy” — “Placing, Spacing, Displacing”, The University of Malta (Malta), April 2017.
PhD:
I hold a PhD from the University of Edinburgh, 2020, funded by the Wolfson Foundation. My thesis examined modernist consciousness in the post-crash Irish novel, focusing on authors including Eimear McBride, Mike McCormack, Anakana Schofield, Kevin Barry and Anna Burns.
Other academic work
I have combined technical and academic expertise as Senior Learning Technologist at the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh, and Learning Technologist at the school of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences (PPLS), University of Edinburgh. Prior to my PhD, I worked as Digital Resources Officer for the School of Advanced Study, University of London.
MSc
MSc in Literature and Modernity, University of Edinburgh, 2015, distinction. Dissertation: ‘Stream of Consciousness in the British and Irish novel 2010-2015’
Undergraduate
Undergraduate MA(hons) in English Language and Literature, University of Edinburgh, 2012, first-class.
Mervyn Peake biographer G. Peter Winnington added my undergraduate dissertation, on Peake, Tolkien and George MacDonald, to his online database of Peake criticism, Peake in Print, here.
In 2012 I received a Carnegie Undergraduate Vacation Scholarship for a six-week creative writing project.
Reasons to Remain 