Elizabeth Rawlinson-Mills

My work is primarily around poetry and poetry education. My recent publications demonstrate the lasting impact of school poetry teaching on beginning English teachers, and the implications for their students, and my current project takes forward key themes from this work (creativity, playfulness, autonomy and community) as principles for both poetry pedagogy and research design. As well as having an immediate impact on classroom practice, this research proposes a framework for noticing, recording and evaluating qualities of the aesthetic/poetic encounter – a problem still unsolved by academic research, but vital for assessments of poetry pedagogy that go beyond what is easy to measure and instead capture the richness of a truly authentic classroom experience.

My work on poetry in education and society develops my ongoing literary scholarship, which is also concerned with poetry in the lives of ordinary people, its role in upholding as well as describing systems of oppression, and its use for and by those who would resist such systems. My forthcoming monograph, Poets, the Press, and the South African War: imperial masculinities at the fin-de-siecle (Edinburgh University Press, September 2026) centres the voices of poets usually hidden from scholarly scrutiny. The book draws on extensive international archive research into popular poetry of the South African War, with a particular focus on poems published in British newspapers. I present a wealth of new material which disrupts the traditional picture of literary endeavour at the turn of the century, making a case for the range and value of a form of poetry which one newspaper commentator at the time called ‘dismal twaddle’ – an assessment which has been too readily accepted by literary historians. Meanwhile the poems I have amassed constitute a rich and democratic historical source for complicating accounts of British responses to the South African War, to debates about imperial and military masculinities and British national character, and to imperial politics more generally. My doctoral thesis in which I began this work was awarded an honourable mention in the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals Sally Mitchell Dissertation Prize 2022<https://rs4vp.org/awards/mitchell-dissertation-prize/>.

My primary material is almost exclusively by white English-language poets working in a colonial context, but my work on it nonetheless exemplifies my commitment to anti-racist and decolonising scholarship. My 2025 article ‘This Racial War’ exposes the colonial construction of whiteness in poetry, showing how the formation and defence of the concept of race is fundamental to structures that continue to govern society, education and scholarship.
I am Academic Director of Pegasus Scholars, Robinson College’s bridging programme for incoming undergraduates from disadvantaged backgrounds. I am also the Faculty of Education's representative on the University Steering Group responsible for a partnership with the BBC on the National Short Story Award<https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0079gw3> and Young Writers' Award<https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/Tj4MhhtbzJC2Xf6pgpb09R/2021-bbc-young-writers-award-shortlist-announced>.

Academic Area/Links

• Curriculum, Pedagogy and Professional Learning
• Arts and Creativities