Veronica Barnsley

Dr Veronica Barnsley is a Lecturer in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature at the School of English, University of Sheffield. She holds a PhD in Childhood Studies and Postcolonial Literature from the University of Manchester.

• Research Focus: Cross-disciplinary analysis of childhood/youth in postcolonial literatures, international development, and medical humanities.
• Projects: Lead role in Material Stories (arts-based interventions with migrant/refugee communities); GCRF-funded mental health initiatives in northern Uganda; WUN-funded education research in West Africa.
• Teaching: Undergraduate: Contemporary Literature, Literature and Critical Thought, Postcolonial Bildungsroman, Black British Writing. MA: New African Literatures, Memory and Narrative, Nation/Race/Empire.

Her research combines postcolonial theory with childhood studies, examining literary and cinematic narratives around birth, infancy, and motherhood. She also explores global modernisms and gender in Jean Rhys’s fiction.

Recent publications focus on migrant narratives, midwifery discourses, and everyday childhoods in African fiction. She supervises PhD projects on postcolonial childhood, youth victimhood, and colonial domestic spaces.

• Scientific Awards:
  • Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA)

Collaborations include UNICEF, Ugandan health departments, and the University of Ghana. Her work bridges arts-based methodologies with global health and development agendas.