Dr Edmund King

Senior Lecturer In English

edmund.king@open.ac.uk

Biography

Professional biography

I joined The Open University as a Research Associate in English in February 2010 and was appointed Lecturer in August 2018 with promotion to Senior Lecturer in October 2023. Originally from New Zealand, I hold MA and PhD degrees in English from the University of Auckland. Before moving to the United Kingdom, I worked for three years (2006-2009) in a digital humanities research role at what was then the New Zealand Electronic Text Centre at Victoria University of Wellington.

Research interests

My current research focuses largely on the history of reading. I have published extensively on soldiers' reading practices during the First World War and have recently become interested in the histories of bibliotherapy and hospital librarianship. My research has involved analysing evidence of reading preserved in a wide range of material: wartime letters, diaries, press articles, memoirs, and the official papers of charities and government departments. It asks: what role did the circulation of books and letters play in the experience of war? Did mass mobilization change reading practices? What new opportunities did it provide for the circulation of texts and ideologies across national boundaries?

With Monika Smialkowska, I am co-editor of Memorialising Shakespeare: Commemoration and Collective Identity, 1916-2016 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021). I have a new edited collection forthcoming, A Hundred Years of Bibliotherapy: Healing through Books, co-edited with Siobhan Campbell and Sara Haslam (Routledge, 2025).

I also maintain research interests in Shakespeare studies, the histories of reading, editing, and authorship (particularly in the eighteenth century), and the digital humanities. I am Co-Director of HOBAR, the History of Books and Reading research collaboration (formerly the Book History Research Group) and I play an active part in organising HOBAR's annual schedule of conferences and seminar series. Previously, I was also responsible for maintaining the Reading Experience Database.

Current additional research interests include literature and digital culture, particularly "vernacular criticism" performed on social media platforms. I am interested in pursuing these questions: what is "digital epistemology" doing to the concepts of literary and canonical value? What is the place of the literary in an age of hyperconnectivity and generative-AI?

Teaching interests

I currently teach on the following modules:

A240: Literature Matters (Chair, 2020–present). Author of two chapters on Patricia Grace's Potiki.
A112: Cultures, 2022–

I have previously taught on:

A233: Telling Stories: The Novel and Beyond. Author of chapters on Edmund Blunden's Undertones of War and Shakespeare's Tempest. Module team member in production, 2017–19. Deputy Chair in presentation, 2019–2022.
A230: Reading and Studying Literature. Module Chair in presentation, 2019–2022.
A893: MA in English Literature (remake). Module team member in production, 2019–2022. Author of chapters on King Lear, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther, and Henri Barbusse's Under Fire.
A334: English Literature from Shakespeare to Austen. Author of chapters on The Spanish Tragedy and Julius Caesar. Module team member in production/presentation, 2012–19. Deputy Chair, 2018–2019
AA306: Shakespeare: Text and Performance. Module team member in presentation, 2011–2015.

I have co-supervised four PhD students to successful completion at The Open University. I am currently co-supervising one PhD student (on aerial combat fiction of the First World War) .

I have been internal examiner for seven Open University PhD theses (in English and History) and have also acted as an external PhD examiner.

I welcome inquiries from prospective PhD students in the fields of book history, the history of reading, Shakespeare studies, and First World War literature.

Impact and engagement

In 2016, I was an academic consultant (with Prof. David Johnson) on the Living Shakespeare project (British Council/BBC World Service).

I have also worked as an academic consultant for The Open University on two TV programmes:

The BBC/RSC/Illuminations/Open University coproduced film of Julius Caesar (BBC4, 2012)
The Sky Arts series My Shakespeare (the second series of Shakespeare Uncovered), a coproduction between The Open University, Blakeway Productions, and Sky Arts (Sky Arts, 2014). This series aired under the title Shakespeare Uncovered: Series 2 in the US on PBS in 2015.

I am an editorial board member of Shakespeare (journal of the British Shakespeare Association) and was formerly an Advisory Group member for the AHRC-funded project, Memories of Fiction (University of Roehampton).

Projects

Reading Communities: Connecting the Past and Present

‘Reading Communities: Connecting the Past and Present’ addresses the AHRC 10th-Anniversary Follow-On Scheme Highlight Notice, which invites proposals that will ‘enhance engagement with, and impact from, research funded by the AHRC during the first two years after its establishment in 2005’. This project is intended as a follow on from the ‘Reading Experience Database 1800–1945’ (2006–2009), which was funded by a £292,108 Resource Enhancement grant awarded by the AHRC in 2006. This one-year project builds on the success of the Reading Experience Database (RED) to create a series of city-focused reading outreach events. These will include lectures, oral history interviews and community workshops focused on crowdsourcing from participants' diaries or other documents. Activities will take place in Belfast, Liverpool, Edinburgh, Birmingham and London.