Pavan Mano is a cultural theorist working in and around the fields of (20th and 21st century) contemporary literature and cultural studies. He received his PhD in English Literature & Cultural Studies from King’s College London, and his work engages heavily with contemporary critical and literary theory as well as affiliated intellectual fields such as postcolonial studies, queer studies, nationalism studies, and political theory.

One of the key themes that animates Pavan’s current research is studying nationalism’s continual generation of outsider figures and its intersections with race, gender, and sexuality. His forthcoming monograph, Straight Nation, (Manchester UP, 2025) examines heteronormativity as a modality for the transmission of nationalism in postcolonial Singapore. Drawing on a range of texts such as political biographies, legal texts, archival records, oral histories and more, the book analyses the production of subjectivity and demonstrates how affects of belonging can be calibrated through the governance of sexuality.

Pavan’s work has been published in journals such as Culture, Theory and Critique, the Journal of Language and Sexuality and he has also written for the King’s English and LSE Southeast Asia blogs, Back Page Football, and Atticus Review.

Teaching

• Race and racialisation
• Queer studies & sexual politics
• Cultural studies
• Postcolonial studies
• Nationalism
• Literary & critical theory

Research interests and PhD supervision

• 20th & 21st century literature
• Postcolonialism & (postcolonial) South Asian literature
• Nations & nationalism
• Cultural studies

Expertise and public engagement

• August 2024: Keynote at the UK Forum on Cultural Diplomacy 2024
• January 2024: TEDx Talk: 'The Nation is Not Your Friend'

Selected publications

• ‘Of course, it’s the Glazers’ fault!’ Back Page Football.
• ‘Ways of Mourning: Reading Grief as Friendship in Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens (1990)’, pp. 46–60 in Giannini, E. and Taylor, A. (eds), Deciphering Good Omens: Nice and Accurate Essays on the Novel and Television Series. North Carolina: McFarland & Co.
• ‘Manchester United is not a Football Club’. Back Page Football.
• ‘The Uses of a Demotic Language’. European Journal of Language Policy 14(2): 163-180
• ‘Rethinking the Heteronormative Foundations of Kinship: The Reification of the Heterosexual Nuclear Family Unit in Singapore’s COVID-19 Circuit-Breaker Restrictions’. Culture, Theory and Critique 62(1–2):142–53. [Open Access]