Professor Anna Kiernan

Dr Anna Kiernan is Associate Professor of Creativity and Literary Culture at the University of Exeter. She is also co-Head of Business Engagement and Innovation in the department of Communications, Drama and Film, and was previously an elected member of the Senate, the senior forum for academic staff. Anna was recruited to the University of Exeter in 2019, to jointly establish and lead the MA Creativity: Innovation and Business Strategy (now the MA Creative Industries).

Anna’s work on policy, impact and creative industries strategy has led to her being selected as a Creative Champion for the Policy and Evidence Centre (Creative PEC), which is led by Newcastle University, funded by UKRI /AHRC, in partnership with the Royal Society of Arts (RSA). She also serves as Chief External Examiner for the University of Westminster’s suite of journalism and communications programmes.

Anna spent her early career working in London as an editor in international trade publishing and as an arts journalist, following on from her MA in Arts Criticism. She has since undertaken advisory roles in the South West and Wales, including the role of National Advisor for the Arts Council of Wales and director and Trustee at the Cornwall Film Festival.

In addition to her senior academic roles at Falmouth University and Kingston University, where she co-founded the MA Publishing, Anna founded an SME before taking on the role of Creative and Editorial Director at Stranger Collective, a creative content studio. She went on to provide consultancy and training for YCN in London, working with clients ranging from Everyman Cinema and The Guardian to Defra and the Department for Transport.

Anna’s practice-based research focuses on questions of participation, identity, community and creativity in relation to writing culture, cultural value and creative practice. Her work has been published in journals, anthologies and periodicals. Her book, Writing Cultures and Literary Media: Publishing and Reception in the Digital Age (Palgrave, 2021) investigates the impact of the digital on transatlantic literary culture, drawing on the work of writers such as Bernardine Evaristo and Patricia Lockwood. 

In addition to her work as an academic, Anna is co-director of The Literary Platform (TLP), which relaunched as a story lab in 2020, with funding from Arts Council England and which was recently awarded CIC status. TLP has a global reach and an international advisory board and contributors and mentors a pipeline of creative talent in the fields of design, illustration, creative writing and publishing. Recent funding from the Education Incubator Fund and the University of British Columbia (UBC) and University of Exeter Catalyst Award, has resulted in Anna leading on a transatlantic publication. Anna also founded the Festival of Creativity in Exeter in 2023, which featured work from that project. Anna was recently invited to be a Fellow for the Education Incubator project titled Against the Grain (2025), led by Dr Amy Cutler, which seeks to resist monocultures of AI use.

In 2023, Anna co-founded Circe, a creative leadership network which hosts quarterly events with cultural leaders in the South West and Wales. Anna is a qualified yoga teacher with a particular interest in yoga for creativity. She is currently writing a book about literary rivers.

Research completions (supervision/examination):

‘A re-evaluation of assumptions about the nature of American ‘placelessness’ in contemporary art and fiction’. Dr Duncan White. Kingston University.

'Playing in the Literary Sandbox: An investigation of fanfiction writers and readers, exploring relationships between fanfiction as a subversive and dialogic literary form, and issues of authorship, representation, empathy and community. Amy Pollard. Oxford Brookes University.