Rebecca is a part-time PhD student in the School of English. She joined Kent in 2019 as a MA Creative Writing student, where she was introduced to the medical & health humanities as part of her elective modules. Previous to that, she worked as a creative producer and community manager in the gaming industry, published a fiction novel and a poetry collection, and spent several years freelancing as a copy editor.
Her third & latest book, Through the Wardrobe, is the publication of her MA dissertation (completed under the supervision of Dr Dorothy Lehane in 2020). A hybrid work of memoir, fantasy fiction and academic paper, it explores trauma healing through live-action roleplaying. It is available online in both ebook and print.
Rebecca is physically and psychosocially disabled as well as autistic, all of which are factors that heavily influence her research interests. She works within the Mad Studies and psychiatric survivor movements both from an academic and activist perspective to inform and guide her work. She is deeply interested and invested in queer studies, gender studies and trans studies, and brings the wisdom from these diverse experiences of marginalised identity to influence her work.
Her work & interests are primarily situated in autopathography, especially when those narratives deviate from the standard arc of restitution or embrace crip temporalities. She is fond of approaches that challenge the status quo, deviate from traditional scholarship, and work to open access to the academy to the less represented.
Dr Stella Bolaki
Dr Dorothy Lehane
Rebecca’s thesis is titled ‘Representations of Embodied Madness in Interactive Narrative Forms’, and explores how different media types enable authors to show what living with psychosocial disability is like. It engages with the medical & health humanities and disability studies as well as theories specific to her chosen media types: video games, interactive & visual novels, roleplaying, and fanfiction.