Dr Alireza Fakhrkonandeh

Dr Alireza Fakhrkonandeh is a Lecturer in World Literature, World Drama and Environmental Humanities at the University of Southampton. 

Alireza is primarily known for his work in the field of Energy and Environmental Humanities, with a specific focus on petrofiction, hydrofiction, and petroculture. More specifically, Alireza's work ponders and probes the representations of oil, water, and other energy forms and resources in both Anglo-American literature and works of world literature more broadly.

The most recent international recognition of his scholarship is his Humboldt Fellowship Award for Experienced Researchers (2025-2026). Alireza's Humboldt Fellowship project probes the question of oil-water complex in literary and cultural productions arising from Iran, Iraq, and Turkey over the course of the long 20th century. Notably, this project also develops a new critical approach which he has called "infrastructural criticism". This is a multi-scalar, world-systemic, and dialectical and cross-disciplinary approach which intends to capture the scalar and relational subtleties of the lived and imagined life of energy forms and their effects on human and nonhuman life. 


Alireza is also widely known as a Drama scholar, he, as is evidently reflected by his publications on modern and contemporary Anglo-American drama, and World Drama (with a particular focus on Persian, Arab and African literatures).
Alireza is primarily interested in World Literature(s) and World Drama(s) with a specific focus on the works which are mainly concerned with the questions of the ethical, aesthetic and ontological facets of environment, ecology, and energy resources. Alireza’s research and teaching span all periods of Anglo-American literature, with a focus on twentieth and twenty-first century narratives about fossil energy extraction. His interests include the immigrant and ethnic literatures, proletarian fiction, disaster and environmental writing, critical race theory, and the relationship between affect, toxicity, and literary form.

Concerning the areas of literature, Alireza is primarily interested in the entanglements between theory and literature (with a specific focus on the intersections between postcolonial, decolonial and world literatures, the philosophy of mind-body relationship, and the philosophy of the event). These three broad categories include some specific trends such as Energy and Environmental Humanities, ecocriticism, Affect Studies, and Trauma Studies in relation particularly to drama and fiction. Alireza has also dedicated a significant portion of his research to the exploration of the literary representations, critical history, and psychoanalytical treatments of mental health, therapy culture, and various psychopathologies (including schizophrenia, melancholia and other psychosomatic issues). Among the other focal points of his research have been the ontology, ethics and aesthetics of the “evental” in the context of such ideas and paradigms as the Decolonial, Capitalocene, Anthropocene, and Disaster Capitalism, along with the use of literature as either a representational or interventionist space for tackling them.    

Recently, Alireza was awarded a British Academy Award (10000 £) for his research project entitled Oil-Water Complex (2022). 

In 2021, Alireza was granted a SIAH award for his Cultures, Ecologies, Economies of Oil project based on which he ran four series of cross-disciplinary talks revolving around the questions of oil cultures, oil literatures, energy humanities, alternative energy forms, and energy futures. The talk series featured eminent scholars working in the fields of environmental history, Energy Humanities, Postcolonial Studies, Ecocriticism, and political economy. For a detailed account of the talks click on the link below: 

https://southampton.likn.co/siah/about/themes/how-do-we-weather-uncertainty.page

Alireza is currently engaged in the completion of two books. Primarily Fueling the Global Stage: Infrastructural Criticism, Performative Petrocultures, and World Dramas. (Under contract, 2026).

He is also currently completing the second volume of his book on Oil and Modern World Dramas (under contract, 2027).

Alireza's research publications include Oil and World Dramas: From Petro-Mania to Petro-Melancholia, A World-Systemic Analysis of Oil Cultures and Literatures in the UK, USA, and Europe (Routledge, 2023). This is a pioneering, three-volume, book in the emerging field of Oil literatures and cultures, and the more established field of World Literatures. This book is not only the first full-fledged book on oil and modern and contemporary drama, but also the first book on oil and world dramas. This book takes as its sweeping scope the entirety of dramatic literature concerned with oil produced in the frontiers of oil production or oil-owning countries. These prominently include: America, Iran, the Arab world, Africa, England, and Scotland. This task is pursued over the course of two volumes where the first volume is dedicated to representations and perceptions of oil in the Anglo-American, Scottish and European world; and the second volume to Iran, Africa and the Arab world.  
 
Alireza's other book, entitled Body and Event in Howard Barker's Drama (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), undertakes a philosophical exploration of the notion of event in Howard Barker's dramatic corpus. Alireza's two extensive and major studies of Howard Barker's drama (Theatre of Catastrophe) are yet to be published. 


Alireza is also a prolific and award-winning translator of literary and philosophical works from English, German and French into Persian. He has translated more than 10 books and works into Persian to date. He is the official translator of Howard Barker's work into Persian. 

Alireza would welcome inquiries from graduate students regarding the supervision of MA and PhD theses that concern any of the fields and areas delineated above in conjunction with diverse aspects of modern and contemporary drama and culture, ranging from modern/postmodern tragedy, post-dramatic theatre, to relationship between image and the text, critical representations of the history of medicine and mental-physical illnesses in contemporary dramatic literature.

Alireza is the convener of four modules: Approaches to the Long 20th Century (an MA core module), Theory and Criticism (a 1st-year core module), World Dramas (a first-year core module), The Worlding of English Literatures (a 2nd-year core module), Burning Worlds, Pipeline Dreams, and Climate Crisis: Traumas and Aporias of Oil and Other Energy Modes in World Dramas (a third-year module), and American Dreams? Monetized Bodies, Terror and Trauma in American Drama (a third-year module).