Ahren joined Loughborough in 2016 as a Vice Chancellor’s Research Fellow, before which he was a Research Associate at the Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts (Newcastle University). He is a writer, artist and critic, working across poetry, creative-critical and theoretical writing, filmmaking and photography.

Ahren gained his PhD from Queen Mary, University of London, for a philosophically-orientated thesis on the changing deployment of commodities as signifiers of identity and intersubjectivity within modern and contemporary poetry. He also holds an MFA Fine Art from Goldsmiths, University of London.

He has published four books of poetry – most recently, 'Hello. Your promise has been extracted' (Bloodaxe, 2017), and a hybrid poetry and film work, 'The sea is spread and cleaved and furled' (Prototype, 2020) – which have won various awards, including three Poetry Book Society Recommendations, an Arts Foundation Fellowship and selection for Bloomberg New Contemporaries (2020).

In addition to his work as a writer, artist and academic, Ahren edited Poetry London – the UK’s leading independent poetry journal – from 2013 to 2019, and has been a jury member for the T.S. Eliot Prize, Society of Authors Awards and Eric Gregory Awards. He has been a Guest Lecturer at Newcastle University, Kingston, Queen Mary, Bath Spa and Kings College London, has delivered the Royal Society of Literature’s annual T.S. Eliot Memorial Lecture and worked regularly with the British Council.

Ahren's moving-image and photographic work has been exhibited at institutions including the South London Gallery (London), Centro de Cultura Digital (Mexico City), Nikola Tesla Museum (Zagreb), EUNIC (Athens) and the Great North Museum (Newcastle).

He is also a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA).