As Professor of English and Head of the School of Education and English at the University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China, and formerly Executive Director of the School of English Studies at Wenzhou-Kean University, Wenzhou, China, as well as having served as a director of writing at two liberal arts, career-oriented academic institutions, I have extensive experience in global education and administration in Sino-foreign higher education contexts, program and curriculum development, program administration, faculty recruitment and mentoring, and student employment supervision. My managerial style can be best characterized as collaborative, and I seek to empower faculty and students in their various roles at the institution.

In my teaching, I utilize student-centered, dialogic practices in which students engage content through small-group activities and critical research projects. I encourage students to present their scholarship at student conferences, and I work with student assistants on faculty-student research projects. I have extensive experience teaching English literature and writing to L2 learners in English medium of instruction contexts in China. I teach such courses as studying literature, literary research and writing, Romanticism, Gothic literature, science fiction, and fantasy literature. 

For most of my career I have published and given papers on Romanticism, Gothic literature, science fiction, and fantasy literature. I have published a college textbook titled Writing That Makes Sense: Critical Thinking in College Composition that is in its second edition. My most recent book is titled The Transcendent Vision of Mythopoeic Fantasy and explores key themes within foundational mythopoeic fantasy texts.

My scholarship examines disciplinary intersections between literature, science, metaphysics, and religion, and I currently have articles in progress involving mytho-textual elements in the Blade Runner films and the integration of science and religion in Bram Stoker's Dracula, both of which will be published in 2026-2027. I also have ongoing projects addressing the metaphysics of John Keats and the theological/philosophical implications of Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem. 

I have been invited to write a book chapter analyzing spiritual realism and narrative form in Xue Mo's Wild Fox Ridge from the perspective of postsecularism to be published in the second volume of the Routledge Companion to Xue Mo. As part of this project, I have been established as a researcher for the Ningbo University Xue Mo Center for Chinese Literature Translation. Xue Mo is a leading figure in contemporary Chinese literature and has produced numerous books, stories, and religious writings. I am planning ongoing projects related to Xue Mo criticism

I have developed research interests in cognitive literary studies and neurophenomenology of reading. In particular, I am interested in combining neuroscience and cognitive theories of "mind reading" or "theory of mind" to study classical theories of the phenomenology of reading (Wolfgang Iser and Hans Jauss) in order to come to a fuller understanding of how humans from various perspectives, experiences, and background read and interpret the same text. However, this research interest is only in a very nascent phase, and I hope to build collaborations in the future to address these research issues and questions. 

PhD Supervision

I am currently seeking PhD students for the areas of Xue Mo studies and/or contemporary Chinese science fiction, with a special emphasis on metafiction, polyvocal narratology, postsecularism and/or integration of religious perspectives with science and technology. 

For more information about my research and teaching, please visit my website at DavidHogsette.com.