Dr Alex John Calder

Alex Calder is an early career researcher currently based at the Faculty of English in Cambridge. For the University of Cambridge colleges, he teaches literature from the 19th to the 21st century, supervises undergraduate dissertations on modern and contemporary literature, and leads classes which develop textual analysis skills for Practical Criticism and Critical Practice. In 2025, Alex is acting as a Tutor for the ICE “Undergraduate Diploma in English Literature: Literature Past and Present” on the unit “The Modern Novel: Experiments in Narrative”.

Originally from Caithness in the Highlands of Scotland, Alex completed an MA (Hons) in English at the University of Aberdeen and an MSc in Literature and Modernity: 1900 to the Present at the University of Edinburgh. He completed his AHRC funded PhD at the University of Cambridge in 2024: a single-author study of the complete works of Ali Smith (including novels, stories, essays, plays, poetry, children's literature) in relation to the ethics and politics of connection and disconnection in contemporary society. He is currently contributing to and co-editing Ali Smith: Critical Essays alongside Dr Eleanor Byrne (Manchester Metropolitan University) for the Gylphi/Routledge Contemporary Writers series.

As a higher education teacher, Alex’s approach is to encourage independent reading skills by facilitating an enthusiastic and supportive classroom context. His teaching practice focuses on encountering and closely attending to literary texts before encouraging students to reflect on how particular aesthetic effects might speak to broader contextual, historical, social, political, ethical, and literary concerns.