Education

PhD English Literature, University of Bergen & University of Northampton (2016)


PGCE Secondary English, Institute of Education, University College London (2012)

MA Theology, Heythrop College, University of London (2011)

MA English, Trinity College, University of Cambridge (2007)


Previous Academic Appointments:

Associate Professor, Nord University (2017-Present)

Research Fellow, Oxford Centre for Christianity and Culture, Regent's Park College, University of Oxford (2015-16).

Visiting Scholar, Editorial Institute, University of Boston (2014-2015)

Assistant Professor, University of Bergen (2013-14)

Dr Callison is Associate Professor in the Department of English, Faculty of Education and Arts. He is the Department Chair for English in Bodø and the Cross-Campus Coordinator (storseksjonskoordinator) for English.

His expertise is in twentieth-century British and American literature and culture. He has particular interests in literature and twentieth-century culture, religion and literature, poetry in performance, and the modernist archive.


Dr Callison is course convenor for Epic Poetry after 1900 (ENG2004). This course focuses on three modern productions of epic proportions: T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets (1943), H.D.'s Helen in Egypt (1961) and Derek Walcott's Omeros (1990). It asks students to explore the revival of oral traditions in recent poetry, the modern revisiting of the classical past, and the idea of the post-colonial epic. 

Dr Callison also contributes to courses on literature and culture on the Bachelor of English (SP171L & SP172L), the Master of Education (MAGLU) programme (ENG2001 & ENG2002), and the English offer for student high school teachers (Lektorutdanning i samfunnsfag) in the Faculty of the Social Sciences (SP157L & SP158L). 

He offers a module on poetry, performance and the classroom to the Master's level course Critical Reflections on Literature and Language in English Teaching Practices (ENG5001).

There is more information about Dr Callison's work on his faculty profile page​ on the Department of English website. ​

Dr Callison's research on modernism & religion has been published in journals such as Literature and Theology, Modernist Cultures and ELH. He has co-edited a critical edition of a previously unpublished book-length poem, The Grail Mass (Bloomsbury Academic, 2018) by the modernist poet and painter, David Jones. 


He has two projects underway. The first is a monograph under contract with Edinburgh University Press in their 'Modernist Cultures' series. It is entitled Mystic Modernism: Poetry and the Remaking of Religion. This project seeks to develop a new language for talking about a range of interactions between institutional religion and modernism, and to challenge scholarly reliance upon terms like dogma, hierarchy and orthodoxy.


The second project makes use of an audio archive, the British Council's 'The Poet Speaks' series, which consists of 180 interviews with and readings by contemporary British poets conducted between 1960 and 1972. This will issue in an edition of the previously unpublished interviews and a monograph on poetry in performance. ​