Dr Eleri Anona Watson
Dr Eleri Anona Watson is Postdoctoral Researcher in English Literature & Critical Theory and Events Manager at the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing, where they are also Co-Founder and Coordinator of the Global Majority & Underrepresented Writers (GMUW) Programme. They lead the Centre's public engagement and outreach initiatives, developing international partnerships, seminars, workshops, festivals, and programmes that bring together writers, scholars, artists, and wider audiences while supporting writers from historically underrepresented communities.
Alongside their work at OCLW, Eleri is Lecturer and Tutor in English Literature and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Oxford, where they also serve as Academic Mentor for the MSt in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. In 2024, they were named the University's inaugural Fellow in Queer Studies (Humanities Division). They have previously held research and teaching appointments at Regent's Park College, the Rothermere American Institute, and the Ashmolean Museum, as well as visiting fellowships at the University of Southern California, Macquarie University, and The Huntington Library.
Eleri's current research examines the contemporary political significance of deconstruction. In the UK, US, and France, governments and mainstream media increasingly deploy ‘deconstruction’ as a political epithet and target Queer, Trans, and Black Studies for their ‘deconstructive’ genealogies and critical orientations. Meanwhile, despite deconstruction’s imprint on queer, trans, and Black theory, many of its scholars dismiss deconstruction as abstract or politically quietist. Eleri therefore asks: What is lost when deconstruction is abandoned just as its critical force is reaffirmed by its opponents? Bringing Jacques Derrida's and Hélène Cixous's writings into dialogue with Queer, Trans, and Black Studies, Eleri considers what resources for liveability emerge when these traditions are brought into conversation without collapsing their differences.
Eleri's published research is interdisciplinary, spanning modern and contemporary literature, philosophy, film, contemporary art, and urban studies. They bring these fields into dialogue with deconstruction and contemporary debates in feminist, Queer, Trans, and Black Studies. They are currently co-editing 'Angles on Cixous', a special issue of Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, marking the fiftieth anniversary of Hélène Cixous' The Laugh of the Medusa'. The special issue, which will be published in 2027 before appearing as a Routledge volume in 2028, features Eleri's translation of and critical commentary on Cixous' 'Le Bouc lié', together with a conversation between Hélène Cixous, Nicholas Royle, and Eleri.
