Alanah is a feminist theorist of identity, with particular investments in Black feminist thought and theories of Blackness. She is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the School of Education, Communication and Society at King’s College London, having previously completed an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow in the School.

Alanah’s current project is about the history and future of Black British feminist theory as Black intellectual thought. Black British feminist theorists have long contributed to, and critiqued, academic and popular definitions of Blackness yet this work is under-represented in current Black studies scholarship, which is dominated by African American critical traditions. In North American Black studies, “Black Metaphysics” is emerging as a new paradigm in theories of (racialised) being that challenges and refigures dominant (often violent) definitions of Blackness. My project will put Black Metaphysics into conversation with the theoretical work of Black British feminists, highlighting their contribution to Black critical theory and proposing a new framework to analyse contemporary gendered and racialised discourses in the UK context.

Alanah completed her PhD at the Department of Gender Studies, London School of Economics and Political Sciences. Alongside her postdoctoral project, she is working on a book project developed out of her doctoral research; this project analyses how academic and popular discourses of “transracialism” interact with theorisations of Blackness, engaging a critical lens invested in Black feminist and trans scholarship and politics. Her interest in this topic emerged from her own experiences of racial ambivalence as a mixed-race woman, and her work explores methodological and epistemological interventions of self-reflection and -interrogation that explore affect as a site of knowledge.

Alanah’s writing has appeared in Feminist Theory and Hypatia, as well as the LSE Engenderings blog, of which she is also a member of the editorial collective. Her wider research interests include Black and trans feminisms; theories and critiques of identity; and feminist epistemologies and methodologies.

Research interests

• Black (and) trans feminisms
• Theories and critiques of identity
• Critical social theory
• Feminist epistemologies and methodologies
• Racial liminality

Recent Publications

Mortlock, Alanah E. 2026. 'Transracialism’s Trans Grammars and the Abstraction of Blackness.' Hypatia. DOI:10.1017/hyp.2025.10046

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/hypatia/article/transracialisms-trans-grammars-and-the-abstraction-of-blackness

Mortlock, Alanah E. 2025. 'Trauma, escape and claims to Black metaphysical space: Black feminist engagements with ‘transracialism.’' Feminist Theory. DOI: 10.1177/14647001251336159

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14647001251336159