Justine came to King’s in 2016, following a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at the University of Oxford and postdoctoral fellowships at Northwestern University in Illinois and at the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama (APGRD) at Oxford. She has subsequently held fellowships at Harvard University’s Center for Hellenic Studies and their Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. Justine has a BA in Classics from Cambridge, an MPhil in English Literature from Bristol, and a PhD from Royal Holloway, University of London.

She is the author of Black Odysseys: The Homeric Odyssey in the African Diaspora since 1939 (2013), Performing Epic or Telling Tales (co-authored with Fiona Macintosh; 2020), and Derek Walcott and the Creation of a Classical Caribbean (2023). She has also co-edited four volumes: Ancient Slavery and Abolition: From Hobbes to Hollywood (2011), The Oxford Handbook of Greek Drama in the Americas (2015), Ancient Greek Myth in World Fiction since 1989 (2016), and Epic Performances from the Middle Ages into the Twenty-First Century (2018).

She is Editor-in-Chief of Classical Receptions Journal and, with Rosa Andújar, she co-edits the Routledge series Classics and the Postcolonial.

Research interests and PhD supervision

• Caribbean literature
• Classical Reception studies
• Myth
• Performance
• Postcolonial theory

Justine’s research focuses on African diaspora literature of the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries, on ancient Greek literature, and on the interconnections between the two.  She is particularly interested in the syncretisation of myth and modes of storytelling and in the way canonical literature has often been appropriated as a tool of resistance by writers. She also works on the performance reception of Graeco-Roman literature across a wide range of media, including theatre, film, music, and spoken word. Justine is happy to discuss PhD proposals relating to any of her areas of interest.

Teaching

Justine teaches on the theories and methods of Comparative Literature, Classical Reception, and Postcolonial Literatures, as well as on myth, canonicity, and performance. 

Expertise and public engagement

Justine has worked with the Almeida Theatre as an Academic Consultant, and given talks at the National Theatre, Southwark Playhouse, and Chicago’s Vintage Theatre Collective. She has curated events featuring poets including Kae Tempest, Caleb Femi, and Caroline Bird, and appeared on Monocle Radio and in a BBC Radio 4 documentary on literary canons and culture wars. 

Selected publications

• Derek Walcott and the Creation of a Classical Caribbean (London: Bloomsbury, 2023)
• Performing Epic or Telling Tales, co-authored with Fiona Macintosh (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020)
• Black Odysseys: The Homeric Odyssey in the African Diaspora since 1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)
• Ancient Greek Myth in World Fiction since 1989, co-edited with Edith Hall (London: Bloomsbury, 2016)
• The Oxford Handbook of Greek Drama in the Americas, co-edited with Kathryn Bosher, Fiona Macintosh, and Patrice Rankine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015)