Laura Marcus Workshop 1 HT24: Digital Life-Writing

Datafied Lives: Life-Writing, Publishing, and the Archive in the Digital Age

Friday 2 February (3rd Week), 10.30am - 12.30pm

History of the Book Room, St Cross Building (English Faculty), Manor Road, OX1 3UL.

Join us for the first Laura Marcus Life-Writing Workshop of Hilary Term 2024 on Digital Life-Writing.

Once we get beyond the clichés about oversharing and privacy online, what does it mean to write a life in the digital age? What impacts do publishers, platforms, and publics have on the way life-writing appears to us today? This session will consider the longer history of digital life-writing, as well as exploring changes to our notion of a writer's archive, and the challenges posed to literary writing when a life can be reduced to a stream of data.

The workshop leaders will be Adam Guy and Sarah Ogilvie, convened by Kate Kennedy.

Participants should come prepared to think about any aspect of life-writing in relation to online publishing, social media, digitising of archives, online platforms.

Adam Guy is a Departmental Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Literature in the English Faculty at the University of Oxford. His work has focused on experimental and innovative writing in the twentieth century, with a particular focus on its publishing and cultural contexts. His monograph, The nouveau roman and Writing in Britain After Modernism was published by OUP in 2019. Recent work has turned to questions of the digital. As a member of the Privacy Settings collective he is co-author of 'Reading the Data Subject', an article published in December 2023 in Post-45's 'Reading with Algorithms' cluster.

Dr Sarah Ogilvie is Senior Research Fellow in Linguistics, and Fellow of Campion Hall, at the University of Oxford. She specialises in language, dictionaries, and technology. Her latest book, The Dictionary People: the unsung heroes of the Oxford English Dictionary, is published by Chatto and Windus. 

You can find out about the second workshop, led by Charles Pigeon, here.

Please note that this event is ONLY open to current members of the University of Oxford. Workshop places will be allocated on a first come, first served basis with priority given to members of the English Faculty. Places will be confirmed one week before the event.

Click here to register

Tea/coffee and cake will be served during the workshop.

This event will take place in the St Cross building on Manor Road (more information). Attendees are advised to wear face coverings while indoors and to use an LFT prior to the event.