Biography

Marion De Schepper (she/her) is a researcher in contemporary Anglophone literature. Her work explores how plants are represented in literature, with a focus on questions of literary form, memory, affect, and ecology.

Marion is currently a BOF Doctoral Researcher at Ghent University, with a project titled: ‘Witnessing Plants: Narrative Explorations of Plants as Experiencers and Mediators of Environmental Change and Crisis in Contemporary Anglophone Fiction’ (2026-2030).

This project examines how contemporary anglophone novels portray plants as dynamic, entangled beings living in and affected by environmental change, crisis, and biodiversity loss. She studies how fiction, by means of formal and thematic strategies, can, on the one hand, concretise, visualise and bring under our attention how plants experience anthropogenic environmental change; plants bear witness to climate change, and physically retain, i.e. remember, these experiences. On the other hand, she explores how plants in fiction can function as mediators of environmental change: characters can witness climate change – and respond in affectively diverse ways – by paying attention to plants. Methodologically, her approach is informed by econarratology, (slow) memory studies, and work on climate change related affects.

Marion obtained a MA in Literature and Linguistics — English and Scandinavian Studies at Ghent University, and a MA in Literary Studies at KU Leuven et al. Her research interests lie in studying plants and environmental issues in historical and contemporary literature. She wrote her bachelor and master dissertations on plants in British Romantic fiction and poetry.

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