Prof David Herd
Director of Impact
The Berry Chair of Literature & Human Rights
- Phone
- +44 (0)1334 46 1879
- D.Herd@st-andrews.ac.uk
- Office
- Room 21
- Location
- Castle House
Biography
David Herd is a poet, critic and co-organiser of the project Refugee Tales. His work is at the intersection of literature and human rights.
David’s critical history, Writing Against Expulsion in the Post-War World: Making Space for the Human was published by Oxford University Press in September 2023. His most recent collection of poetry, Walk Song (2022), was a Book of the Year in the Australian Review of Books. He has published widely on the politics of human movement and on modern and contemporary poetry and poetics and has held visiting fellowships at George Mason University, Simon Fraser University and the Writing Center Gloucester, MA. His edited volume, Contemporary Olson, was published by Manchester University Press in 2016.
In collaboration with Anna Pincus and colleagues at Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group, David has co-organised the project Refugee Tales since 2014, through which he has helped articulate the call for a future without detention. Refugee Tales makes its call by sharing the stories of people who have experienced indefinite detention in the UK. Stories have been published in four volumes by Comma Press.
David is currently Co-Investigator on the AHRC project ‘Archive of Solidarity: Precarity, Creativity and Shared Future-Making across Closed Borders’ (PI, Dr Ozlem Biner, SOAS). He was Principal Investigator on the British Academy project ‘Hostile Environments: Polices, Stories, Responses’ from 2019-2022.
PhD supervision
- Nimaya Lemal
- Viktoriia Medvied
Selected publications
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Open access
The state of asylum
Saunders, N. & Herd, D., 28 Jul 2026, Scottish Council on Global Affairs.Research output: Book/Report › Policy brief
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Another time
Herd, D., 1 Jan 2025, Blackbox Manifold, 33.Research output: Contribution to specialist publication › Article
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Refugee tales: volume V
Herd, D. (Editor) & Pincus, A. (Editor), 18 Jul 2024, Manchester: Comma Press. 168 p.Research output: Book/Report › Book
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Writing against expulsion in the postwar world: making space for the human
Herd, D., 28 Sept 2023, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 287 p. (Oxford mid-century studies)Research output: Book/Report › Book