Dr Arina Cirstea

I am a Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Learning and Study Support. Key aspects of my role include leading the embedded learning development provision for the Faculty of Business and Law, coordinating the LLS Open Programme of Workshops and leading the Writing Group for Research Students. I am also involved in designing, delivering and consulting on various areas of writing and study skills development, for example through in-curriculum sessions, self-selecting workshops, resources and one-to-one support.
I joined DMU in 2017, having previously held roles in the areas of Academic Writing, English Literature and EAP at Coventry University, the University of Warwick and the University of Bucharest (Romania). 

Monograph

• Space, Self and Spirituality: Mapping British British Women’s Writers Urban Imaginaries: Space, Self and Spirituality. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015

Peer-reviewed articles and book chapters

• ‘The Power of Fear: The Programmatic Use of Terror in Totalitarian Regimes’ in Pana-Grigorescu, Irina and Surdulescu, Radu (eds). University of Bucharest Review. A Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies. Orientalism and Occidentalism. Volume IV, no 3-4. Bucharest: Department of English, 2002. 255-267.
• ‘Postmodern Dis/Relocations of Identity in the Fiction of David Lodge’ in Pana-Grigorescu, Irina, Surdulescu, Radu and Oltean, Roxana. (eds) University of Bucharest Review. A Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies. Modernity: The Crisis of Value and Judgment. Vol. VIII, no 4. Bucharest: Department of English, 2006. 131-7.
• ‘Memory and the Media in Post-1989 Central and East-Europe’ in Totosy de Zepetnek, Steven; Andras, Carmen and Marsovsky, Magdalena (eds) The New Central and East European Culture. Aachen: Shaker Verlag, 2006. 247-257.
• ‘Images of Erotic Dystopia in the Novels of David Lodge’ in Vianu, Lidia, Hampson, Robert and Stotesbury, John (eds) Text in Context. ContBritLit. Essays in Contemporary British Literature. Vol. 2. 3 vols. Bucharest: Bucharest University Press, 2007. 109-116.
• ‘Reason, Passion and the Public Sphere: Constructions of Woman in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse’ in Vianu, Hampson and Stotesbury. Vol. 3. Bucharest: Bucharest University Press, 2007. 259-285.
• ‘Marx, Postmodernism and Spatial Configurations in Jameson and Lefebvre’ in CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture. Purdue University. 10.1 (2008).
• ‘A (New) ‘Community of Private People Come Together’: Women’s Revision of the Enlightenment’ in Conference on British and American Studies. Brasov: Transilvania University Press, 2009.189-201
• ‘Angela Carter’s The Magic Toyshop Between Magic Realism and Feminist Dystopia’ in Vianu, Lidia, Hampson Robert and Stotesbury, John (eds) Literary Criticism, Between Science and Creation? Bucharest: University of Bucharest Press, 2010. 39-47.
• ‘Doris Lessing’s Dytopian Novels’ in Vianu, Lidia et. al. (eds) Literary Criticism, Between Science and Creation? Bucharest: University of Bucharest Press, 2010. 131-141.
• ‘Mapping and Spatial Configurations in Jameson and Lefebvre’ in Totosy de Zepetnek, Steven and Wang, I-Chun (eds.) Mapping the World, Culture, and Border-crossing. Kaohsiung: National Sun Yat-sen University, 2011. 16-30.
• ‘Feminism and Faith: Exploring Christian Spaces in the Writing of Sara Maitland and Michèle Roberts’ in E-rea: revue d'études anglophones Université de Provence. 8.2 (2011). https://ddec1-0-en-ctp.trendmicro.com:443/wis/clicktime/v1/query?url=http%3a%2f%2ferea.revues&umid=8d7cb940-fd60-4d29-8b77-866f056cd290&auth=06e76e57000ea428f34b63fea08893688229b6ce-84bc76a7e60be5e0025858d58efff8f571eca278. org/1563
• ‘A Space of One’s Own: Reading Michèle Roberts’ Urban Imaginary’ in Peer English 9 (2014)
• ‘Postcolonial Encounters in Mircea Eliade’s Maitreyi and Maitreyi Devi’s Na Hanyate’ in Theory in Action, 6.4 (2013)
• ‘Joy, Doubt and Wonder: Contemporary Readings of the Annunciation’ in Mason, Emma (ed.) Reading the Abrahamic Faiths: Rethinking Religion and Literature. London: Bloomsbury, 2014
• Contributor to ‘Academic literacies twenty years on: a community-sourced literature review’ by Hildson, J. et al., Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education, 15 (2019)
• Engaging students online: an analysis of students’ motivations for seeking individual learning development support, Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education 23 (2022)
• [Reflections on] Engaging students online: an analysis of students’ motivations for seeking individual learning development support, Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education Special Edition, ALDinHE Conference Proceedings and Reflections, 25(2022)
• ‘Learning so much…’: exploring the student perspective on the impact of attending optional LD workshops, Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education, 29 (2023). doi: 10.47408/jldhe.vi29.1084

I have previously researched and published in the area of literary and urban studies as well as literature and religion. My current research interests focus on the areas of student engagement with writing development, online learning and pedagogical uses of AI tools.

• Learning Development
• Academic Writing
• Writing Development for Research Students

• October 2007-September 2010 PhD in English and Comparative Literary Studies, University of Warwick (FT)
• March 2009-March 2010- Postgraduate Award in Introduction to Academic and Professional Practice (PGA IAPP), University of Warwick
• October 2006-September 2007- MA in English (Dist), University of Warwick
• October 2002-September 2003- MA in British Cultural Studies, University of Bucharest (Romania)
• October 1998-June 2002- BA (licenta) in English and Romanian, Language and Literature, with Teaching English as a Foreign Language qualification, University of Bucharest 

• August 2023-AIP (Academic Innovation Project) fund for ‘Pedagogical uses of generative AI tools to enhance the Academic English skills of international students’; project team member
• March 2021-Centre for Academic Innovation (CAI) sabbatical fellowship for the development of a pedagogic project, DMU
• 2019- Aurora Leadership Programme for women in Higher Education, Advance HE
• 2018- Research Training Project Fund for the organisation of two Academic Writing Days for Postgraduate Researchers, DMU

• ALDinHE (Association of Learning Developers in Higher Education) member
• EATAW (European Association for the Teaching of Academic Writing) member

Selected conference papers

• ‘Gendered Spaces in Doris Lessing’s Fantasy Fiction’. A Woman's Place: Locating the Feminine in Modern & Contemporary Culture, Newcastle University, 20 June 2008)
• ‘A (New) ‘Community of Private People Come Together’: Women’s Revision of the Enlightenment’(7th Conference on British and American Studies-Discourses of the Self, Discourses of the Community, ‘Transilvania’ University, Brasov, Romania, 3-4 April 2009)
• ‘“More Spatial than Everything Else”: Mrs Dalloway and Fredric Jameson’s Theory of Postmodern Urban Space’ Woolf and the City: 19th Virginia Woolf Conference, Fordham University, New York (USA), 4-7 June 2009)
• ‘Feminism and Faith: Exploring Christian Spaces in the Writing of Sara Maitland and Michèle Roberts’Women and Spirituality/Femmes et spiritualité, University of Marseille-Provence, Aix-en-Provence (France), 12-13 June 2009)
• ‘London Observed: Contemporary Representations of the Metropolis’ Literary London. Representations of London in Literature. Hosted by the Department of English, Queen Mary, University of London, 8-9 July 2009
• ‘The Body and the City in Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook’ Writing Bodies/Reading Bodies in ContemporaryWomen’s Writing. Hosted by University of Oxford, 11-12 September 2009)
• ‘Feminist Readings of the Visitation in Sara Maitland’s Daughter of Jerusalem and Michèle Roberts’ The Visitation’ Re-Writing the Bible. University of Glasgow, 14-15 June 2010)
• ‘Urban Imaginaries: Mapping Space and Time in Michèle Roberts’ London novels’ (Time and Space in Contemporary Women’s Writing, University of Hull, 8-9 September 2011)
• ‘The Practice of Online Feedback-Challenge or Opportunity for Academic Writing Educators?’, WDHE (Writing Development in Higher Education) Conference, hosted by Coventry University, 4-7 July 2014
• ‘Using a multimodal referencing guide as a ‘scaffolding’ strategy in the writing tutorial’, EATAW (European Association of Teachers of Academic Writing) Conference, hosted by Royal Holloway, University of London, 19-21 June 2017
• ‘Strategies to support the proof reading skills of home and international student writers’, ALDinHE (Association for Learning Development in Higher Education) conference, hosted by University of Leicester, March 2018.
• ‘Revisiting student engagement’, ALDinHE (Association for Learning Development in Higher Education) LD@3 webinar programme, online, 20 May 2020
• ‘Engaging students online: a reflection on pedagogy, practice and the student voice’, ALDinHE (Association for Learning Development in Higher Education) online, 9 April 2021
• ‘Engaging students online: an analysis of students’ motivations for seeking individual learning development support’ ALDinHE (Association for Learning Development in Higher Education) virtual conference, online, 10 June 2022
• “‘Learning so much…’: exploring the student perspective on the impact of attending optional LD workshops”, ALDinHE (Association for Learning Development in Higher Education) conference, online, 9 June 2023

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2023-6558