On 30 September 2021, The Open University’s funded period on the project READ-IT comes to an end. While the project team Dr. Shafquat Towheed (UK Lead), Dr. Alessio Antonini, Dr. Francesca Benatti, and Dr. Maya Parmar move to new projects, the project resources remain free and available for public use. The website will also remain…

The OU READ-IT team are pleased to present their new reading questions on the project Contribution Portal. The ten new postcard questions are available in Czech, English, German, French, Italian, and Dutch. Take a look, and see which question you get! The READ-IT team are interested in all types of reading experiences, habits and memories,…

The Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP) will meet virtually in Münster, Germany, from July 26 to 30, 2021. Over 400 delegates will be attending to discuss research in the field of book history, broadly understood. The theme of this year’s annual conference “Moving Texts: From Discovery to Delivery” has inspired…

On 20-21 May 2021, the Gender and Otherness in the Humanities (GOTH) symposium will take place virtually. GOTH is a research centre based in the School of Arts and Humanities, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at The Open University. The interdisciplinary conference includes panels on textiles, transnational theatre, and women’s writing and book history….

UK Project Lead Dr. Shafquat Towheed, with OU colleague Dr. Edmund King, are offering a talk entitled ‘From RED to READ-IT’ at ‘The Library Circulation Histories Workshop’, on 20 April 2021. This event takes place as an online asynchronous event, with recorded presentations and a live forum discussion, from 19-30 April. Details of the event…

The OU READ-IT team are pleased to be joining Imagine! The Belfast Festival of Ideas and Politics again this year, on 23rd March, 5pm, for a talk and interactive workshop entitled ‘Reading in the Pandemic’. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed everything. Confined to our homes, we have turned to books and reading for reassurance, contemplation…

The Reader in the Book: Books, Reading and Libraries in Fiction, a conference hosted by the Institute of English Studies, will take place on 18, 19, 25 and 26 March 2021. It is not hard to find fiction within fiction. Don Quixote modelled himself on chivalric romances, and became in turn a model for other…

The READ-IT team were pleased to host the event ‘Reading in the Pandemic’, on 18 November, for the Being Human Festival. We enjoyed a great turnout for the online event, which took the form of three distinct parts. The recordings for each part are now available to view on the SAS Youtube channel, simply click…

The Open University were pleased to host the most recent consortium meeting on the 20-21 October 2020. On 20 October, we focussed on individual reports from all colleagues on different work packages, presentation and discussion around technical developments, annotation campaigns, and public engagement. On 21 October, we had an exciting research day, where members of the consortium and…

We are delighted to announce that registration is now open for The Open University History of Books and Reading (HOBAR) online conference, ‘Bookshelves in the Age of the COVID-19 Pandemic’, 3-4 November 2020, which is supported by The Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP). The conference will be held online via…