Biography
Frankie has taught on the interdisciplinary Foundation Year programme at Birmingham Newman since 2023.
Prior to this he worked at Coventry University and was the 2022 Early Career Visiting Scholar in American Studies at Northumbria University. He received his BA in American Studies and MA in Modern and Contemporary Literature, Culture and Thought, both from the University of Sussex, and his PhD in English Literature from the University of Westminster.
Frankie’s research spans contemporary literature, culture and political thought, and has appeared in the journals Textual Practice, Contemporary Women’s Writing and Anarchist Studies. His first monograph, Anarchist Writing in the Contemporary United States: Literature, Direct Action, and the Refusal of Representation, is forthcoming with Manchester University Press.
He is an AdvanceHE Fellow, having received his Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education Practice from Birmingham Newman in 2024.
Profile
Research interests
Frankie’s research focuses on the literary, cultural and theoretical production of contemporary radical political movements, with a focus on anarchist and ecological movements in the United States. His current research projects focus on the role of domestic spaces in political movements and their cultures, the work of Jeff VanderMeer and Richard Powers, and literary representations of infrastructure and logistics.
Teaching
Frankie teaches on the Core Foundation Year modules, Education and Society and Being Human in a Digital World, which are taken by all Foundation Year students at Birmingham Newman. In the 2025/26 academic year he led a redesign of the Degree Project module taken by the January start Foundation Year cohort. He also contributes teaching to the BA English and the BA and MA Applied Humanities.
Administrative Responsibilities
Frankie coordinates the Foundation Year Peer Mentor scheme, which recruits Level 4 and 5 students to support Foundation Year students as they begin their studies. In the 2025/26 academic year he is leading a Student-Staff Partnership Project to develop a new university-wide training for student peer mentors.
Membership of Professional Organisations
- Anarchist Studies Network
- British Association for American Studies
- Applied Humanities Research Centre
- Foundation Year Network
- Editorial Collective, Hyphen Journal
- Steering Committee, Teaching American Studies Network
Conferences and Other Research Activity
Invited presentations
“Beyond the Critique of Complicity: In Defence of Purity?” Anarchist Activism in Focus, Anarchist Studies Network event (online), April 2023.
“Literature, Logistical Capitalism, and Opposition.” University of Buckingham, February 2023.
“Literature and/as Direct Action: Reading Contemporary U.S. Anarchism.” Northumbria University, April 2022.
“Toward an Anarchist Literary Instrumentalism.” University of Westminster, November 2020.
Conference presentations
“Anarcho-vitalism Writes Back: Political Formalism, Anarchist Literary Criticism, and the George Floyd Rebellion.” 10th Anarchist Studies Network Conference, University of Manchester, August 2026 (accepted).
“Supporting Student Belonging Through Peer Mentoring: Insights from Foundation Year.” Birmingham Newman University Learning and Teaching Conference, Birmingham Newman University, October 2025.
“Shut the Fuck Up: Security Culture and the Contemporary American Ecological Novel.” British Association for American Studies, 70th Annual Conference, University of Hertfordshire, April 2025.
“‘If You Book Them, They Will Come’: Supporting Active Learning Through Extracurricular Activities.” Birmingham Newman University Learning and Teaching Conference, Birmingham Newman University, September 2024.
“Low Theory for the Anthropocene: Transdisciplinary Knowledges in Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy.” London Conference in Critical Thought, University of Greenwich, June 2024.
“Among the Corpses, Facing the Flames: George Orwell, Henry Miller and Anarcho-nihilism.” Political Studies Association Annual Conference, University of Strathclyde, March 2024.
“‘Everything Is Always Beginning’: Contemporary Anarchist Science Fiction and Overdetermined Apocalypse.” 8th Anarchist Studies Network Conference (online), August 2022.
“Three Orientations for Literature and Logistics.” London Conference in Critical Thought, Birkbeck, University of London, July 2022.
“‘The Chapters Huck Finn Never Had’: Mobility and Belonging in Women’s Countercultural Travelogues.” British Association for American Studies Postgraduate Symposium (online), December 2021.
“Against Prefiguration: An Anarchist Iconoclasm.” Alternative Futures and Popular Protest, University of Manchester (online), June 2021.
“Gender Violence, Power and DIY Resistance in American Anarcha-Feminist Zines.” European Association for American Studies Women’s Network Symposium, University of Warsaw (online), April 2021.
“Toward an Anarchist Literary Instrumentalism.” 6th Anarchist Studies Network Conference, University of Nottingham (online), September 2020.
“The Literature of Counterlogistics: The Olympia Commune and Anarchist Textual Performativity.” British Association for American Studies, 64th Annual Conference, University of Sussex, April 2019.
“Texts as Weapons: Notes Toward an Anarchist Literary Theory.” Hyphen: An Exposition Between Art and Research, University of Westminster, March 2019.
“‘A Movement that Renovates People, as Well as Buildings’: Neodomestic Space in Narratives of the Lower East Side Squatters’ Movement.” Radical Cities, Radical Narratives, University of London, October 2017.
Panels and streams organised
Low Theory/Radical Praxis stream (four panels), London Conference in Critical Thought, University of Greenwich, July 2024.
Anarchist Cultures stream (three panels), 6th Anarchist Studies Network Conference, University of Nottingham (online), September 2020.
“Performing Radical Thought in America Since 1968.” British Association for American Studies, 64th Annual Conference, University of Sussex, April 2019.
Publications
Articles in Peer-reviewed Journals
Hines, F. (2026). ‘A terrific waste’: White Teeth from recurrence to accretion. C21 Literature: Journal of 21st-century Writings, 13(1), 1-22. https://doi.org/10.16995/c21.24193
Hines, F. (2023). Anarchist domesticities: from DIY culture to DIY politics in consent zines. Contemporary Women’s Writing, 17(3), 241–261. https://doi.org/10.1093/cww/vpae009.
Hines, F. (2023). Against prefiguration: an anarchist iconoclasm. Anarchist Studies, 31(1), 25–45. https://doi.org/10.3898/AS.31.1.02.
Hines, F. ‘A movement that renovates people, as well as buildings’: squatting and neodomestic space in Seth Tobocman’s War in the Neighborhood. Textual Practice, 36(7), 1096–1115. https://doi.org/10.1080/0950236X.2021.1900374.
Books
Hines, F. (forthcoming). Anarchist writing in the contemporary United States: literature, direct action, and the refusal of representation. Manchester University Press.