Research
My research sits at the intersection of studio practice and critical inquiry. The central questions concern how narrative operates in and through material form — how a book, a print, a sequence of images can produce meaning that exceeds what any single medium could carry alone.
Current research develops across two overlapping strands: a practice-based investigation of landscape as a site of cultural pressure (ongoing since 2018), and a theoretical engagement with expanded notions of narrative that draws on transmedia studies, book arts, and the philosophy of place.
Funded research includes Ambient Literature (AHRC, 2016-18), established to investigate the locational and technological future of the book; and Immersive Arts (Co-Investigator. AHRC, 2024–27), supporting over 200 UK-based artists and organisations to explore the creative potential of virtual, augmented and mixed reality technologies.
Publications
Books
- Ambient Literature: A guidebook (DCRC, 2024. Link)
- Ambient Literature: Towards a New Poetics of Situated Writing and Reading Practices (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) — co-edited with Jon Dovey and Kate Pullinger
Selected essays and chapters
- ‘Early days of the immersive exhibition network’. w. Densley, Amy; McIntosh, Verity. UWE Bristol. 2026
- ‘On writing instability’ in Ambient Stories in Practice and Research: Digital Writing in Place., ed. A. Spencer, A. Mandal, & J. Kidd (Bloomsbury, 2024)
- ‘A manifesto for slow immersion. w. Clarke, Sharon. (UWE Bristol, 2023)
- ’ A provocation for post-digital publishing’. (UWE Bristol. 2022)
Supervision
Currently supervising doctoral students working on: expanded artists’ book practice; folk horror as aesthetic category; place-writing and landscape phenomenology.