Professor Will May (University of Southampton) reflects on the stories that poets tell about the people who make them poets. Will’s AHRC Fellowship, Invisible Mentors, explored the role,…
Professor Nicky Marsh (University of Southampton) In this blog Professor Nicky Marsh, from the University of Southampton, introduces March’s theme of ‘communities’. There are as many forms of community as…
Professor Ben Davies (University of Southern Denmark) A Reading List on Reading. Much of my recent research focuses on the relations between reading, readers, and time use, both inside and…
Dr JT Welsch (University of York) I keep reading that reading is a dying pastime. Every day, a new study shames our shrinking attention spans, or a professor moans that…
Professor Gail Marshall (University of Reading) Reading Matters: Middlemarch The material book I am exceptionally lucky to have on my shelves a first edition of Middlemarch, the very generous…
Dr Rebecca Fisher (English Association) Two books changed my life. As a teenager, I read A. S. Byatt’s The Virgin in the Garden, and something fundamental shifted in the way books…
Professor Jennifer Cooke (Loughborough University) We live in what’s called an ‘attention economy’: Insta, YouTube, TikTok and all the other sites want our eyes on them. They want our attention.…
Professor Robert Eaglestone (Royal Holloway University of London) Reading is a very complex word. In educational discourse, it’s used in three ways which are overlapping but can, irritatingly, work against each…
What Next? What Now? – Some Ideas for Reading and Taking Steps By Ralph Pite (ralph.pite@bristol.ac.uk) Here are… Five Top Sixes (and a Last Hurrah) I hope they may…
Listening to the natural world and hearing how it used to sound. By Francesca Mackenney and Jamie Castell The negative effects of noise on mental as well as physical…