Dr EmmaLucy Cole – Downward Exploration

Dr EmmaLucy Cole is a researcher, lecturer and writer interested in the ways in which we represent people from cultures other than our own in literature, visual arts, and media. She holds a PhD from the University of Bristol (Feb 2026), titled Persistent Stereotypes of Bedouin in British Travel Writing 1900-2022. EmmaLucy is based in central Scotland and is available for lectures, workshops and research opportunities.

After more than two decades of learning from and collaborating with people from SWANA regions, EmmaLucy was invited to spend six weeks with a Bedouin community in Sinai, studying the local Arabic dialect and engaging with daily life. The trip resulted in a two-year residency from 2011-13, although she has now been visiting the community for more than 15 years. As a result of this time, and having witnessed first-hand some of the ways in which marginalised groups can be misrepresented, EmmaLucy decided to undertake PhD research in order to understand how literary stereotypes can have an impact for indigenous communities far beyond the page, and how these stereotypes might be avoided and challenged.

Her literary research explores the textual application of stereotypes through linguistic manipulation, and the narrative devices used alongside interreferential connections within the travel writing genre. It sits within postcolonial studies, travel writing scholarship, linguistic theory and literary theory. Visual research considers the images used by travel writers on social media, including analysing how writers attempt to increase a sense of authority by engaging in ‘ethnic drag’. EmmaLucy is also a musician and has played and performed across the world in both classical and Arabic styles.

In 2021, EmmaLucy’s chapter Bedouin is a Place: Freya Stark’s Travel with Nomads was published in the anthology “Travel Writing in an Age of Global Quarantine” (2021, Anthem Press). Her current research (post-PhD) considers how travel writers engage with social media to develop narratives of otherness (publication pending 2026), the use of ghostwriters in travel writing, and aspects of neocolonialism in travel narratives. Future research will explore narratives of Beduinity by Bedouin writers in the diaspora.

EmmaLucy is a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy as a university lecturer and was Editor-in-Chief of the MHR journal (2021-22). To read a brief CV please click here.

Intro

“When travelling, you often pass through cultures seeing glimpses of life but rarely understanding the exchanges between men, women and their community. EmmaLucy Cole’s fascinating presentation challenged the concept of a physical and psychological journey through a deeper exploration of a locality”. Robin Trangmar [Overland Event, August 2019]

Since 2006 EmmaLucy has published online and in print, spoken at international conferences and events, been interviewed on radio and TV programmes, provided research consultation for articles by fellow adventurers, and lectured at venues such as the Royal Geographical Society in London and the Jersey Arts Centre in the Channel Islands. EmmaLucy’s research explores the way in which travel writers have represented other cultures and her public lectures draw from this research as well as her extensive experiences of travelling solo.

At the start of the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic EmmaLucy joined the nationwide Bike Shed Community Response riders and she now volunteers with Headway Somerset providing talks to critical care nurses about brain injury.