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I
am currently a Junior Research Fellow at
St John’s
College, Oxford. I hold a BA in French and German from Oxford
University (2004), a Masters (M.St.) in European Literature (German, 2006), and a
D.Phil. (German, 2010), also from Oxford.
My broad research interest is in scientific approaches to the study of
literature, in particular those that have the potential to combine theoretical
insights from the cognitive sciences, psychology, and neuroscience with
empirical testing of readers’ responses to fictional texts and the close reading
essential to traditional literary criticism.
My
doctorate was on Kafka, and my current research project investigates forms of ‘cognitive
realism’ (the ways in which textual evocations correspond to cognitive
realities) with regard to cognitive capacities such as memory, attention, and
emotion, and in the two literary ‘periods’ of Realism and Modernism. My aim is to elucidate the
cognitive effects of specific texts and to draw broader conclusions about
Realist and Modernist aesthetics.
For six years I lived on a narrowboat in Oxford, and
I am now adjusting to life on dry land. I enjoy weight-lifting and am trying to find more time to read for pleasure.
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