Join us for an open day

Book your placeBook your place

Join us for an open day

Book your placeBook your place

£500 off selected accommodation

Explore HallsExplore Halls
Staff profile

Professor Matthew Cheeseman


Professor of Writing and Folklore

A headshot of Matthew Cheeseman wearing a scarf against a blue sky

Subject

English, Creative Writing and Publishing

Academic unit

College of Health and Humanities

Department

School of Humanities, Law and Creative Arts

ORCiD ID

0000-0003-4057-495X

Campus

Kedleston Road, Derby Campus

Email

m.cheeseman@derby.ac.uk

About

I am a writer and folklorist. At the University of Derby I am Professor of Writing and Folklore in the School of Humanities, Law and Creative Arts, where I supervise doctoral research. As a writer, I work across fiction and non-fiction, often in collaboration with artists and designers in the creation and publication of books, pamphlets and other things. As a folklorist, I am interested in indigeneity, nationalism and living heritage: how folklore has been used to imagine the nation, and who that leaves out.

I have been Principal Investigator for two projects funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Folklore Without Borders is an international research network working to make folklore and folklore studies in the UK more diverse and inclusive; it has grown to more than ninety members and continues to meet beyond its funded period. Dracula Returns to Derby restored the city’s place in the story of the world’s most famous vampire, whose cloak and evening dress were first seen on stage at Derby’s Grand Theatre in 1924. Its work continues through the Derby Dracula Enterprise CIC, a spin-out company of which I am a founding director.

I sit on the Council of the Folklore Society, run Spirit Duplicator, a small press, and co-edit the Journal of Imaginary Research.

Research interests

My research connects folklore studies, creative writing and cultural history, and I often work with and through creative and critical writing, performance and curation to answer research questions.

Much of my recent work asks how folklore has been used to imagine the nation, particularly in England: how the idea of an ‘indigenous’ English folk developed, who it excludes and how it is taken up by the far right today. I edited Folklore and Nation in Britain and Ireland (Routledge, 2022), wrote on English nationalism, folklore and indigeneity for The Routledge Companion to Folk Horror and, with Paul Cowdell and colleagues, am thinking about a history of folklore studies in Britain. Through Folklore Without Borders I have asked how the field might become more diverse and inclusive.

A second strand concerns Dracula and Derby. Dracula Returns to Derby was a participatory project on how adaptation and heritage shape a city’s identity, considering what Dracula has meant and can be made to mean. This has led me to thinking about and practising research commercialisation: you can take a look at my consultancy work here [link to follow].

I also write about creative writing itself: how it is taught, how programmes are designed and how it works as a way of doing research. Earlier projects explored student culture, nightlife and the experience of higher education, and the use of comics to support people recovering from cancer treatment.

Recent publications

Books

Chapters and articles

A fuller list is on my ORCiD record.

Membership of professional bodies

Professional interests

I run Spirit Duplicator, a small press dedicated to publishing poetry, fiction and theory in attractive editions. It was founded in 2015 and named after an old copier whose purple ink (allegedly) caused intoxication when inhaled. The press owns a spirit duplicator (a Roneo Model 50) but most of its books, pamphlets, tapes and records are produced digitally or by risograph; it has published more than fifty of them.

I am interested in how creative writing can help researchers write. With Kay Guccione I edit the Journal of Imaginary Research, which publishes fictional research constructed by real academic staff, research staff and research students every November during Global Academic Writing Month; it is now in its eleventh issue. I developed the creative strand of WriteFest, the global festival of academic writing. In 2023 I was appointed a mentor to early career researchers for the British Academy’s regional mentorship programme.

I care about how creative writing is defined and taught in universities. I sat on the QAA advisory group that reviewed the Creative Writing Subject Benchmark Statement in 2023–24, contributing to its section on equality, diversity and inclusion, and I have written about designing a master’s degree in creative writing for Bloomsbury’s The Creative Writing Workshop in the 21st Century.

Qualifications

Recent conferences

Recently I have been speaking about folklore, nationalism and diversity. In 2025 I discussed lore and identity at the British Academy’s Folklore Reimagined Late, gave a paper on the whiteness of the English folk at the Midlands Conference in Critical Thought and spoke on transnational folklore at LMU Munich. With Paul Cowdell and Tina Paphitis I presented Folklore Without Borders at the SIEF congress in Aberdeen, having spoken about the network and the history of folklore studies in Britain at the American Folklore Society’s annual meetings in Portland (2023) and Albuquerque (2024).

Dracula has taken me to Derby’s twin city, Osnabrück, and in May 2025 we held Dracula Returns, an international conference and celebration, at Derby’s Museum of Making. I speak regularly at Great Writing, the international creative writing conference at University College London, most recently on how writers might approach folklore ethically. Closer to home, I have talked about living heritage at a Research Café at QUAD, and in January 2026 represented the University at the House of Lords launch of the UK’s Inventories of Living Heritage.

Experience in industry

I am a founding director of the Derby Dracula Enterprise CIC, a spin-out company that continues the work of Dracula Returns to Derby with cultural organisations in the city and beyond; in July 2026 it held Hot Goth Summer, a film festival and market, with QUAD. Since 2015 I have run Spirit Duplicator, a small press that has published more than fifty books, tapes and records.

Since 2024 I have been involved with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s implementation of the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, and I ran one of the Community Support Hubs for the UK’s new inventories of living heritage.

I am a trustee of Bloc Projects, the contemporary art gallery in Sheffield. Artists and companies have commissioned essays from me, including Matt Stokes for his show at Site Gallery in Sheffield, Florian Roithmayr for shows in Brussels, Sheffield and London, and Blackeyed Theatre for its 2024 production of Dracula. For three years I was on the panel of judges for a national book award.

In the media

Dracula Returns to Derby was covered by the Guardian in 2024 (‘Fangs for the memories: how Dracula was made in Derby’), and I have talked about Dracula, reading and writing on BBC Radio Derby. I was quoted in a BBC News piece on folklore and social media in October 2024, Spirit Duplicator’s releases have been reviewed in The Wire, and in 2022 I was the subject of an hour-long profile, ‘Dabbling for academic resistance and resilience’, in the Research Lives and Cultures podcast.

Earlier, Times Higher Education ran a full-page article on my research into student chants (2014), and Do It Thissen, my 2012 exhibition of Sheffield fanzines and DIY music, was covered by BBC 6 Music, BBC News and the Guardian.

International experience

Folklore Without Borders brought together researchers, practitioners and cultural organisations from across the UK with colleagues in Norway, Estonia and the United States, and the American Folklore Society as a partner. I present regularly at international folklore conferences, including those of the American Folklore Society and SIEF, and in 2025 spoke on transnational folklore in Munich and on Dracula in Osnabrück, Derby’s twin city, whose twinning office has worked with the Dracula project.

I have lectured at the University of Tartu in Estonia and acted as an external examiner for a PhD at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia. My press, Spirit Duplicator, operates between the USA, the UK and Switzerland, and I have produced books for Theatrum Mundi, which launched at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

Teaching responsibilities

I teach creative writing and publishing on BA (Hons) Creative Writing and Publishing and MA Creative Writing. Since 2010 I have designed sixteen modules and taught on more than thirty, covering novel writing, self-publishing, editing, workshopping, the working life of writers and critical theory for creative writers. I led the team that designed MA Creative Writing in 2017 and was its Programme Leader until 2023.

I supervise doctoral research in creative writing, folklore and heritage. Six of my doctoral researchers have completed, with projects ranging from novels of queer urban fantasy and Southern Gothic in the north of England to studies of bootleg records and the popular music canon. I am oversubscribed at the moment, and as such, am not accepting new research students.

Additional interests and activities

I collect records and books! Music runs through much of what I do: Spirit Duplicator releases records and tapes as well as books, and in 2023 it put out Tuck In by Dobber, an album for which I wrote the lyrics to four songs and performed one. I have performed with the sound artists Trans/Human in London and Estonia, and in 2017 I lived on site as a caretaker for The Clearing, Tom James and Alex Hartley’s ten-month apocalyptic art project at Compton Verney. I have kept a blog at einekleine.com since 2000.