Ben Davies

Summary

I am an Associate Professor in Literature & Culture. My research focuses on modern and contemporary literature and theory, with particular emphasis on time, the novel, narrative theory, reading and readers. My research is situated at the intersections of literature, narrative theory, and the sociology of reading.

In 2024-2025, I held a Research Fellowship at the Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London. In 2024, I held a Visiting Fellowship at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (CRASSH) at the University of Cambridge.

From 2022-23, I was the PI on a research project funded by the Council for the Defence of British Universities (CDBU) that examines the relationship between the value of reading and time use in the twenty-first-century university. The rationale for this research is to see when, how, and why academics and students read. The main output of this project will be a book provisionally titled Reading At University.

From 2020-2022, I collaborated with Christina Lupton on the 'Lockdown Reading Project', an ethnographic study of reading in Denmark and the UK during the covid-19 pandemic. The project was awarded funding by the Carlsberg Foundation in Denmark, and led to the co-authored monograph Reading Novels During the Covid-19 Pandemic (Oxford University Press, 2022). This book was awarded the 2022 British Association for Contemporary Literary Studies Monograph Prize.

My first monograph, Sex, Time and Space in Contemporary Fiction, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2016. I am the editor of two book collections, John Burnside: Contemporary Critical Perspectives (Bloomsbury, 2020), and (with Jana Funke), Sex, Gender and Time in Fiction and Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). I have published numerous articles on reading, time, and contemporary literature.

Biography

I received an MA and PhD in English from the University of St Andrews and an MSt in English Language and Literature (1900-Present) from the University of Oxford.

I currently serve as Chair of University English. I am also a member of the Institute of English Studies Advisory Council.

Research interests

My research focuses on:

Modern and Contemporary Literature
The Novel and Narrative Theory
Reading and Readers
Sociological and Ethnographic Approaches to Reading
Time and Temporality
Philosophy and Literary Theory

Teaching responsibilities

I teach on the BA (Hons) English Literatue degree programme. On this programme, I coordinate the Level 4 module ‘Unpacking Texts: Introducing Critical Theory’, which introduces students to theoretical questions concerning the nature of literature and literary study. At this level, I also teach modernist, postmodernist, and contemporary literary representations of gender, race, and the body, on the module 'Body Politics'. On 'The Short Story' module, I teach twentieth- and twenty-first-century developments of this form, including postmodernist experimentation and microfictions. At Level 5, I teach colonial, postcolonial, and refugee narratives on the module 'Space, Place and Being'. At Level 6, I offer a specialist module, ‘Time, Temporality, Contemporary Fiction’, which offers an in-depth examination of the contemporary. I also coordinate the Level 6 Dissertation module.

At postgraduate level, I teach on the MSc in Sociology and the MRes in Humanities and Social Sciences programme. I also supervise MRes and PhD projects on modern and contemporary literature and literary theory.

I am currently supervising PhD projects on contemporary reading communities, the relations between AI and Authorship, and forms of literaty knowledge. I would welcome proposals from prospective postgraduate students relating to my research interests.