Aman Erfan

Profile

I completed my BA(Hons) in English Literature and MPhil in English from Government College University, Lahore, and joined the School of English at Leeds as a PhD student in 2024. My prior research has focused on posthuman materiality in contemporary East-Asian women’s writing, representations of nonhuman narratives and human-animal relations in contemporary speculative fiction, as well as the narrative and textual practice of the 19th-century writer Lafcadio Hearn.

My doctoral research focuses on representations of fungi and mycelia in recent fiction amidst the so-called fungal turn in arts and culture, focusing particularly on 21st-century fiction by women and queer writers. As the first extensive account of queer and feminist fungal imaginaries in 21st-century fiction, it proposes a new biotic framework to approach posthuman embodiment, relations, and ecology in contemporary fiction and thought. My PhD research project is funded by the AHRC through the White Rose College of the Arts & Humanities (WRoCAH).

I am currently a seminar tutor at the School of English and an associate editor at parallax. In 2024/25, I was a co-organiser for the postgraduate-led reading group based in the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures, Quilting Points.

Research interests

My current research interests include:

• Depictions of fungi and mycelia
• Posthuman materiality and embodiment
• Nonhuman studies
• The weird
• 21st-century fiction and writing

 

Qualifications

• BA(Hons) English Literature
• MPhil English

Research groups and institutes

• Environmental Humanities Research Group
• Medical Humanities Research Group
• Critical Life Research Group