Dr Kieron Smith

Dr Kieron Smith

Dr Kieron Smith is an interdisciplinary writer and researcher from south Wales. He studied the MA in Modern Welsh Writing in English at CREW, before embarking on a PhD under the supervision of Professor M. Wynn Thomas. This thesis was a wide-ranging study of the poetry and films of John Ormond, and was later worked into a book, published with University of Wales Press under CREW's Writing Wales in English series, John Ormond's Organic Mosaic: Poetry, Documentary, Nation (2019). Between 2016-2019 he worked with Prof. Kirsti Bohata (CREW) and Prof. Jon Anderson (Cardiff University) as Research Associate on the Literary Atlas project, a mixed-methods, cross-disciplinary exercise in literary geography, combining public participation activities with more traditional literary critical and human geographical methods in order to examine the rich geographical and social contexts of twelve celebrated English-language Welsh novels. It resulted in several research publications, a website (literaryatlas.wales), and a touring visual art exhibition. Kieron has also written on Dylan Thomas, co-editing and contributing to the 2020 book New Theoretical Perspectives on Dylan Thomas with Dr Rhian Barfoot. He has more recently co-edited a collection of essays with Dr Dan Evans and Dr Huw Williams, The Welsh Way: Essays on Neoliberalism and Devolution (Parthian, 2021). His chapter in that book comments on the neoliberalisation of cultural policy in Wales. He has written numerous book reviews for publications such as New Welsh Review, The Welsh Agenda and Planet, has contributed a number of helpsheets for CREW's GCSE English resources website, and is a co-host of the podcast Desolation Radio.