I am a writer and academic interested in unstable, indeterminate, ambivalent, ambiguous, and unreal ways of thinking, feeling and knowing, and in the strange new knowledges they make.
I work with feminist new materialisms and neuroqueer theory. What I write is often considered to be in the realm of the medical humanities, and I’m pretty ambivalent about that. I draw on an eclectic mix of cultural texts in my work, particularly TV & film in speculative genres.
My monograph New Materialist Encounters with the Borderline: Unstable Knowledges published by Routledge in 2026 as part of their Advances in the Medical Humanities series, brings borderline experience (known clinically as borderline personality disorder) into conversation with neuroqueer and new materialist theory.
Rather than embracing the clinical definition of borderline personality disorder or rejecting the diagnosis as a misogynistic construct, I affirm and explore the unstable and indeterminate thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and selves that often accompany borderline experience. Approaching such instability as a way of knowing, the book explores the ethical and epistemological potential of the borderline as diagnostician, philosopher, and mystic.
My academic background is interdisciplinary, mixing a BA in English Literature & Creative Writing and a Masters in Interdisciplinary Psychology with a PhD in Women’s Studies.
I have lectured in English, Sociology, Women’s Studies, Religious Studies, and Philosophy. I currently teach at York St John University and you can contact me at f.lewis@yorksj.ac.uk.
I am co-founder (with Veronica Heney) of the Mad Feeling Collective, an interdisciplinary research collective which brings lived experience and affect-led approaches to explorations of madness on TV.
