Dr. Nikkila began teaching at UTSC in 2009 and has been an active part of the English Department’s maturation as an academic unit. Her teaching interests range from introductory literary analysis to gender and queer theory to genre fiction like fantasy and the Gothic, but her heart lies with the Victorian novel. Dr. Nikkila is profoundly committed to understanding and promoting student learning, welfare, and engagement, and she has been a Faculty Advisor for the department’s DSA, Students of English Literature & Film, since its inception. Having transitioned from sessional lecturer to appointed faculty in the teaching stream, and given her own diverse educational history (public school in suburban Detroit, undergraduate at Harvard, postgraduate at University of Edinburgh), her perspective on educational environments is complex, dynamic, and always changing, and she considers herself very lucky to be working on a campus that perfectly reflects those qualities.