Pavan Mano is a cultural theorist working in contemporary literature and cultural studies. He received his PhD in English Literature & Cultural Studies from King’s College London, and his research engages with critical and literary theory as well as affiliated intellectual fields such as postcolonial studies, queer studies, nationalism studies, and political theory.

Pavan's first monograph, Straight Nation (Manchester UP, 2025) examines postcolonial nationalism and its intersections with race, gender, and sexuality. Drawing on a range of texts such as political biographies, legal texts, archival records, oral histories and more, the book shows how states can cultivate, fertilize, and propagate ideas of "good" and "bad" members of society.

His work has been published in journals such as Culture, Theory and Critique, Critical Discourse Studies, and the Journal of Language and Sexuality and he has also written for LSE Southeast Asia, 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

• Topics in cultural studies (inc. popular culture)
• 20th & 21st century literature
• Postcolonialism & (postcolonial) South Asian literature
• Nations & nationalism
• 'Race' and racialization

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

• Straight Nation: Heteronormativity and Other Exigencies of Postcolonial Nationalism (Manchester University Press, 2025). Read the introduction here.
• ‘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 (2021), pp. 142–53.
• ‘Manchester United is not a Football Club’. Back Page Football.
• ‘Ways of Mourning: Reading Grief as Friendship in Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens (1990)’, in Deciphering Good Omens: Nice and Accurate Essays on the Novel and Television Series, ed. by Erin Giannini and Amanda Taylor (McFarland, 2023), pp. 46–60.