Our people

Dr Emma Knowles

Lecturer
Western Civilisation Department

Areas of expertise: Old and Middle English literature; ecocriticism; medievalism; biblical literature; Arthurian literature

Email: Emma.knowles@acu.edu.au

Location: ACU North Sydney Campus

ORCID ID: 0000-0001-9650-2731

Dr Emma Knowles is a former Gates Cambridge scholar who completed her PhD in 2019. Her PhD dissertation focused on the representation of nature in the Old English poems Genesis A, Exodus and Daniel and is currently being developed into a monograph. She worked as an Associate Lecturer and Lecturer in the Discipline of English and Faculty of Arts at the University of Sydney from 2019-2023. Emma’s research interests include Old English and Middle English literature, medieval biblical literature, Arthurian literature, ecocriticism and medievalism, and she has previously published on the Old English Exodus and Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur. Emma currently serves as the contributor for Old English biblical poetry to the Years Work in English Studies. 

Book Chapters

• Knowles, E. (2020). Nature as Worshiper: Reading "The Song of the Three Children" in 'Daniel and Azarias'. In Thomas Willard (Eds.), Reading the Natural World in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Perceptions of the Environment and Ecology, (pp. 53-69). Turnhout: Brepols Publishers.
• Knowles, E. (2017). Women's Worldmaking in the Subtext of Malory's 'Morte D'Arthur'. In Tom Clark, Emily Finlay, Philippa Kelly (Eds.), Worldmaking: Literature, Language, Culture, (pp. 31-40). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. 

Journals

• Knowles, E. (2022). Rethinking the Red Sea in the Old English 'Exodus'. English Studies, 104(2), 217-239.

Accolades or awards 

• University of Sydney, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Award for Teaching Excellence (Early Career) with Distinction (2020)

Editorial roles

• Early Career Researcher Committee for Parergon journal (2018–19) Associate Editor Ceræ Journal Volume 5 (2018–19)

Public engagement actvities

• Talk at the University of Cambridge ‘Festival of Ideas’ (2015)

• Bookclub session for Leichardt Library on The Good Wife of Bath, by Karen Brooks (2023)