Research on reading

My research explores why reading matters, what happens when we read, and the history of libraries. Click on the images for more details

The Child in the Library

Libraries for children have long been part of a vision of opportunity and access. My research draws on Victorian history and literature to ask how this vision has taken shape. I also consider contemporary writing about children and libraries, to explore how it has relevance today. My work pays close attention to the ways in which issues of health, race, class, culture (particularly Deaf culture), and gender, intersect with how libraries have felt, and continue to feel, to users. My aim is to shed new light on the politics of access, and the value of libraries. My first chapter looks at the idea of children’s hospital libraries. I’ve started a blog about some of my research here.

Hidden Readers

I curated an award winning exhibition at Compton Verney Museum, which brought a neglected eighteenth century feminist library to life. You can read more about the history of this library here. In a commitment to explore the stories of readers whose experiences are often hidden or overlooked, I asked readers in prisons to tell us about books that had made a difference to them. Click on the image for more details, or on this link for an account of the project

The Feeling of Reading

My first book, On Sympathy, explored the question of what happens when we read, probing, in particular, the question of whether reading does make us more sympathetic - and whether and how we identify with fictional characters. My Guardian Column, The Last Word, continues in this area, thinking about feeling and reading. I continue to think about the uses and moral value of reading in all my work, particularly in relation to the use of reading as ‘cure’, and the work I do as part of the Poetry of Medicine project. For details about my work with the NHS please click here. I wrote an article about sympathy, reading, and wellbeing in the NHS here. I was proud to judge the Wellcome Book Prize in 2018.