About

Programme Leader for BA (Hons) English.

Teaching responsibilities

Tutor and module leader for:

• 'Theorising Literature and Meaning' (first year)
• 'Literature, Identity and the Real' and 'Modernism' (second year)
• 'After the Modern: Existentialism and Postmodernism and 'The Art of Crime' (third year)

I also supervise dissertations on a range of subjects at third-year and postgraduate levels.

Professional interests

• Modernism
• Postmodernism
• Fantasy
• Crime and transgression in literature
• Existentialism
• Critical theory
• Innovation in assessment and curriculum design

Research interests

• Poststructuralist and psychoanalytic approaches to literature and culture
• Twentieth-century literature, art and film, with a particular focus on surrealism and its legacy
• Fantasy and myth

Membership of professional bodies

• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

Qualifications

• BA (Joint Hons) English and American Literature, University of East Anglia
• MA in Postmodernity, Cardiff University
• PhD in Critical and Cultural Theory, Cardiff University

Recent publications

• Larsen, R., Sims, R. and Whitehead, I., 'A Transformative Learning Experience: An Undergraduate Research Conference as Authentic Assessment', Practitioner Research in Higher Education, Online First (2024), 49-60. Available here (open access): https://ojs.cumbria.ac.uk/index.php/prhe/issue/view/99
• Sims, Robin, 'S/Z/COOPER/COOPER: Barthes with Twin Peaks: The Return', Barthes Studies 6 (2020): S/Z/L: Fifty Years of S/Z, 50-77. Available here (open access): https://sites.cardiff.ac.uk/barthes/article/s-z-cooper-cooper-barthes-with-twin-peaks-the-return/