Ï㽶ÊÓƵ

Alice Bell

  1. About us
  2. Our people
  3. Staff profiles
  4. Alice Bell

Professor Alice Bell BA, MSc, PGcertHE, PhD

Professor of English Language and Literature

Summary

My research specialisms are stylistics/literary-linguistics (including empirical research), narratology, and digital fiction. Throughout my work I develop systematic approaches for the analysis of (mostly digital) texts, examine interactivity and immersion in digital literary environments, consider how digital technologies affect fiction and fictionality, and investigate how readers cognitively process digital fiction.  My teaching reflects my research interests and I teach on a range of undergraduate modules and supervise postgraduate students across the English programme.

alice bell

About

I am a literary-linguist and a narratologist which means I am interested in how language and narrative structure works in literature. My research focusses in particular on born digital fiction which is fiction that is written for and read from a computer and includes hypertext fiction, narratively-driven videogames, app-fiction for mobile devices, augmented reality fiction, and Virtual Reality fiction. I research interactivity and immersion in digital fiction and also the way that digital technology can play with the boundary between reality and fiction. I have published research on possible worlds theory, unnatural narratology, metalepsis, second-person narrative, fictionality, and "post postmodern" narrative. I recently co-edited (with Marie-Laure Ryan) Possible Worlds Theory and Contemporary Narratology (University of Nebraska Press, 2019) and am co-editing (with Jan Alber, Aachen) a special issue of the European Journal of English Studies on fact and fiction in post-postmodern narrative.  I also do empirical research, creating reader response methodologies and testing and developing existing theory. 

I have undertaken several reader-response studies, collecting data from readers in order to understand how digital literary reading works cognitively. This includes studies on immersion, ontological ambiguity, second-person narrative, and hyperlinks. Much of this work has been carried out as part of the AHRC-funded Reading Digital Fiction project which I led from 2014-2017 (collaborating with Astrid Ensslin, Alberta and Lyle Skains, Bangor). The project combined research on narrative theory, cognitive poetics, and empirical methods and also delivered an extensive programme of public engagement activities.  

I am currently collaborating with One-to-One Development Trust on the Digital Fiction Curios project which aims to preserve works of digital fiction produced in Flash which will become technologically obsolete once Flash is removed from web browsers in 2020. I am also co-writing a monograph with Astrid Ensslin entitled Unnatural Narrative and Digital Fiction (University of Nebraska Press).

Teaching

Sheffield Creative Industries Institute

College of Social Sciences and Arts

External Funding:

  • Sept 2023: £349,957 from AHRC/DFG Ï㽶ÊÓƵ Project scheme as PI for 'Reading Post-Postmodernist Fictions of the Digital: Narrative, Technology, and Cognition in the Twenty-First Century'. Co-PI: Prof Jan Alber, Giessen (Ref: AH/X001601/1)
  • June 2014: £243,159 from AHRC Ï㽶ÊÓƵ Grant scheme as PI for ‘Reading Digital Fiction’. Co-I: Prof Astrid Ensslin, Bangor (Ref: AH/K004174/1)
  • May 2010: £740 from the British Academy Small Ï㽶ÊÓƵ Grant scheme as PI for 'Metalepsis and Unnatural Narratology' with Dr Jan Alber (Univ. of Freiburg) (Ref: SG100637).
  • March 2008: £15,500 from The Leverhulme Trust Academic Collaboration scheme as PI for ‘Digital Fiction International Network’. CI: Prof Astrid Ensslin, Bangor (Ref: F/00455/E).

Subject area or group

English

Courses taught

  • BA (Hon) English
  • PhD English

I have taught across the English programme including:

  • Reading and the Mind
  • Language and Style
  • Digital Communication
  • How to be a Linguist
  • Describing Language
  • Language Dissertation

Ï㽶ÊÓƵ

Featured Projects

Link 1:
Link 2: Digital Fiction Curios project.
Link 3:
Link 4:

Collaborators and Sponsors

One-to-One Development Trust; Dreaming Methods.

Publications

Journal articles

Bell, A. (2024). . Anglica. An International Journal of English Studies, 33 (2), 31-50.

Ensslin, A., & Bell, A. (2024). . Anglica. An International Journal of English Studies, 33 (2), 51-70.

Bell, A. (2021). . Style (DeKalb), 55 (3), 430-452.

Alber, J., & Bell, A. (2019). . European journal of English studies, 23 (2), 121-135.

Bell, A., Ensslin, A., Van Der Bom, I., & Smith, J. (2019). . Language and Literature.

Ensslin, A., Bell, A., Smith, J., Van Der Bom, I., & Skains, L. (2019). . Participations, 16 (1), 320-342.

Bell, A., Ensslin, A., Van Der Bom, I., & Smith, J. (2018). . International Journal of Literary Linguistics, 7 (1).

Bell, A. (2016). . Narrative, 24 (3), 294-310.

Bell, A. (2014). . Style, 48 (2), 140-161.

Bell, A., & Alber, J. (2012). . Journal of Narrative Theory, 42 (2), 166-192.

Ensslin, A., & Bell, A. (2012). . Storyworlds, 4, 49-73.

Bell, A., & Ensslin, A. (2011). . Narrative, 19 (3), 311-329.

Bell, A., Ensslin, A., Ciccoricco, D., Rustad, H., Laccetti, J., & Pressman, J. (2010). . electronic book review.

Ensslin, A., & Bell, A. (2007). . dichtung-digital.

Bell, A., & Georgiou, N. (n.d.). Multimodality, Transmediality, and Ethics in Post-Postmodernist Fictions of the Digital. Narrative.

Bell, A., Alber, J., Georgiou, N., & Wong, D. (n.d.). . Narrative.

Book chapters

Bell, A. (2023). . In Ensslin, A., Round, J., & Thomas, B. (Eds.) Routledge Companion to Literary Media. Routledge:

Bell, A. (2022). . In Iché, V., & Sorlin, S. (Eds.) The Rhetoric of Literary Communication. From Classical English Novels to Contemporary Digital Fiction. Routledge:

Van Der Bom, I., Skains, L., Bell, A., & Ensslin, A. (2021). Reading Hyperlinks in Hypertext Fiction: an Empirical Approach. In Style and Reader Response: Minds, Media, Methods. (pp. 123-142). John Benjamins:

Bell, A., Browse, S., Gibbons, A., & Peplow, D. (2021). Responding to Style. In Style and Reader Response: Minds, Media, Methods. (pp. 1-20). John Benjamins:

Bell, A. (2019). . In Bell, A., & Ryan, M.-.L. (Eds.) Possible Worlds Theory and Contemporary Narratology. (pp. 249-271). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press:

Bell, A., & Ryan, M.-.L. (2019). . In Possible Worlds Theory and Contemporary Narratology. University of Nebraska Press:

Bell, A., & Ensslin, A. (2018). . In Dinnen, Z., & Warhol, R. (Eds.) The Edinburgh companion to contemporary narrative theories. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press:

Bell, A. (2016). . In Gavins, J., & Lahey, E. (Eds.) World Building: Discourse in the Mind. (pp. 15-32). Bloomsbury

Bell, A. (2014). . In Bell, A., Ensslin, A., & Rustad, H.K. (Eds.) Analyzing digital fiction. (pp. 21-38). New York: Routledge:

Bell, A., Ensslin, A., & Rustad, H. (2014). . In Bell, A., Ensslin, A., & Rustad, H.K. (Eds.) Analyzing digital fiction. (pp. 3-17). New York: Routledge:

Bell, A. (2013). . In Alber, J., Skov Neilson, H., & Richardson, B. (Eds.) A poetics of unnatural narrative. (pp. 185-198). Ohio State University Press

Bell, A. (2011). . In Page, R., & Thomas, B. (Eds.) New narratives : stories and storytelling in the digital age. (pp. 63-82). University of Nebraska Press

Bell, A. (2011). Ontological boundaries and methodological leaps: The importance of possible worlds theory for hypertext fiction (and beyond). In New Narratives: Stories and Storytelling in the Digital Age. (pp. 63-82).

Bell, A. (2007). . In Stockwell, P., & Lambrou, M. (Eds.) Contemporary stylistics. (pp. 43-55). Continuum:

Books

Bell, A., & Ensslin, A. (2024). . Routledge.

Alber, J., & Bell, A. (Eds.). (2021). Fact and Fiction in Contemporary Narratives. Routledge.

Ensslin, A., & Bell, A. (2021). Digital Fiction and the Unnatural: Transmedial Narrative Theory, Method, and Analysis. Ohio State University Press.

Bell, A., Browse, S., Gibbons, A., & Peplow, D. (Eds.). (2021). Style and Reader Response: Minds, Media, Methods. John Benjamins.

Bell, A., & Ryan, M.-.L. (Eds.). (2019). . Lincoln: University of Nebraska.

Bell, A., Ensslin, A., & Rustad, H.K. (Eds.). (2014). . New York: Routledge.

Bell, A. (2010). . Palgrave Macmillan.

Theses / Dissertations

Ivansson, E.A.C. (2023). . (Doctoral thesis). Supervised by Gibbons, A., Bell, A., & Peplow, D.

Ondrak, J. (2022). . (Doctoral thesis). Supervised by Bell, A.

Other activities

I am a member of the AHRC Peer Review College.

Postgraduate supervision

I welcome applications from research students interested in studying in the fields of cognitive poetics and stylistics, narratology/narrative theory, digital fiction (including videogames), contemporary fiction, experimental writing, reader response research, and empirical methods.

I have supervised the following postgraduate research projects:

  • Alternate Realities: Possible Worlds Theory and Counterfactual Historical Fiction;
  • Drawing out Language: The Destabilisation of Information Overload through Conceptual Writing;
  • A Study into How Contemporary Print Fiction Remediates Digital Writing;
  • ‘Digesting Creepypasta’: A Genre Analysis of Social Media Horror Fiction;
  • The Archival Turn in Multimodal Literature;
  • Nothing As We Need It: For Chimeric Writing;
  • Anacoluthic Syntax: Feminist Phrasings in Writing and Reading

Media

Alice is interested in how digital technology can enhance and evolve literature. She studies literature written specifically for digital media, which often combine text with images, film, and sound. As a literary-linguist, Alice is interested in how language works in digital fiction. She is also interested in how readers process these texts cognitively.

Cancel event

Are you sure you want to cancel your place on Saturday 12 November?

Close
}