David Cooper

David Cooper is Senior Lecturer in English and Co-Director of the Centre for Place Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University. With a PhD from Lancaster University, his research explores literary geographies through digital mapping, creative-critical practice, and environmental humanities frameworks.

His scholarship focuses on:

• Literary representations of place in contemporary British writing
• Digital methods for analyzing spatial narratives
• Creative collaborations between writers, artists, and scientists
• Place-based curricula development

His publications demonstrate consistent engagement with how literature represents and reimagines place. Recent work examines contemporary place writing as a distinct genre while earlier contributions pioneered digital cartographic methods for analyzing Romantic texts. His collaborative projects like 'Hayling Island: Stories at Sea Level' blend academic research with multimedia public engagement.

As founding co-director of the Centre for Place Writing, he curates events including the Place Writing Festival and PLACE collections. He leads the 'Writing & Place' undergraduate module and supervises PhD research spanning poetry, deep mapping, and regional identities. His current projects include co-editing the Routledge Handbook of Literary Geographies and contributing to the 'Voices of the Future' treescapes initiative.