Down in the Ground Where the Dead Men Go

Small’s asleep in her room, festive bedding pulled up around her shoulder, surrounded by an army of soft toys. The festive season has been good to her, so far: she’s watched the town lights switch-on, delighted in the antics of the naughty elf, and participated in her first proper school play on the big stage…

It’s Always Christmas Eve in Bedford Falls

In my eternal quest to explain my academic research to my friends, “but seriously, what is it you actually do?” I like to transplant the ideas I have about digitisation, and manuscripts, into more familiar contexts. And so, the materiality of absence becomes a Pink Floyd song, and the cultural significance of a physical manuscript…

Star Trek & bodily resurrection

I want to talk about the last two episodes of Star Trek: Picard. Just, oh my goodness. I’ve got so many feelings right now. WARNING: there are spoilers in this post for all three seasons of Star Trek: Picard. I’ve spoken before about how I used to sit in my Nan’s living room in South…

Resurrections: Digitisation & the Death of the Real

Cyberpunk epic The Matrix is resurrected in the cinema, and it reminds me of my deep and abiding love for Baudrillard.

The Grave: Bodley MS 343

Earlier this year I attended (via Zoom) the 2021 Anselm Lecture, Practices of Writing in England, 1050-1250 at the University of Kent, which this year was presented by Elaine Treharne. The lecture piqued my interest simply because (cue gasps of horror) I had never heard of the Tremulous Hand of Worcester, and I wanted to…

Reading Instapoetry, Glasgow University 14th-16th July 2020

At the Reading Instapoetry conference in July this year, I examined Chaucer’s House of Fame and its foreshadowing of Instagram.

Anthropomorphism & British Weather

“What’s your name” Coraline asked the cat. ‘Look, I’m Coraline. Okay?” “Cats don’t have names,” it said. “No?” said Coraline. “No,” said the cat. “Now you people have names. That’s because you don’t know who you are. We know who we are, so we don’t need names.” [Neil Gaiman, Coraline] My brother and sister-in-law were recently…

“According to Manuel Castells (1996, 1997, 1997a), the dynamic complexities of the information age are giving rise to both new forms of state organisation – ‘the network state’ – and new forms of societal organisation – ‘the network society’. In both cases, although the Internet and associated technologies are not conceived as simple causal mediums…

“Museum Welcomes Wikipedia Editors”

An article in the New York Times recently discussed the merits for cultural organisations of liaising with members of the public to increase knowledge of a museum or library’s collections. In the article, entitled “Museum Welcomes Wikipedia Editors”, collaborators working with the Smithsonian Institute were encouraged to edit existing Wikipedia pages or to create new ones…