Kristina Fleuty

Kristina is a Research Assistant in the Forces in Mind Trust Research Centre, which sits within the Veterans & Families Institute for Military Social Research. She is principally involved with the management and development of the Veterans and Families Research Hub website. Kristina also contributes and provides support to the wider activities of the Research Centre. Prior to this, Kristina was Research Assistant on the VFI’s Blesma Families Study, which sought to understand the needs of veterans and families living with limb loss.

kristina.fleuty@aru.ac.uk

Background

Kristina holds a BA (Hons) in English Literature and an MA in Literature, both from the University of Essex. Kristina is particularly interested in the interdisciplinary nature of literature and the potential for interaction with the humanities and social sciences. A key concern of the social sciences, human social behaviour and in particular the relationships between people in social and cultural settings, is often at the core of literary texts.

Kristina has experience in a wide range of comparative world literature, from classical to contemporary, across many literary forms; these include novels, poetry, short stories, the essay and epic traditions, plays, transcripts and memoir. In 2012, whilst completing her MA, Kristina was selected to attend a series of workshops run by Nobel Prize winning poet Derek Walcott.

Kristina’s previous professional experience includes LRC management, delivering English skills classes and library lessons in secondary and further education settings, mentoring, editorial work on magazines and academic journals, writing articles and copywriting.

Research interests

• Literary exploration of identity, the human condition, social and cultural behaviour
• Psychogeography and memory mapping
• War and post-war narratives
• Trauma narratives
• Literature as a technology
• Creative writing 
• Creative non-fiction, in particular memoir, autobiography, interview transcripts and the personal essay
• The arts for health, mental health, wellbeing and creative self-development 
• Bibliotherapy
• Writing the self and the therapeutic potential of story and creative writing
• Textual analysis, close reading and linguistics 
• The interdisciplinary study of literature 
• World literature, in particular English, United States and Caribbean literature
• The Enlightenment 
• Literary criticism and theoretical approaches to literary analysis and research, in particular psychoanalytic, romantic, Aristotelian, philosophical, phenomenological, transcendentalist and reader-response criticism 

Qualifications

• BA (Hons) English Literature, University of Essex (2008-2011)
• MA Literature, University of Essex (2011-2012)