My current research is on the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, fantasy literature, WW1 Poetry, and also digital humanities. In the Tolkien/fantasy area I am assisting in the development of a research cluster in this area. In War studies I ahve explored, through many projects, crowd-sourcing of war memories and objects (especially WW1) and am now beginning work on WW2 (memory, objects, and digitization).
My PhD was in Old English (Ælfric's Old Testament Homilies - see http://users.ox.ac.uk/~stuart/kings). In 1991 I began work in elearning and applying these to the arts (hence humanities computing) developing my first package to teach online based around Isaac Rosenberg's 'Break of Day in the Trenches'.
This led to major digital humanities projects around the War poets - most notably the First World War Poetry Digital Archive (see http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/) but also major crowd-sourcing initiatives across Europe (e.g. Europeana 1914-1918 https://www.europeana.eu/portal/en/collections/world-war-I). I have also contributed the chapter on 'The British Canon' as part of the forthcoming Cambridge History of First World War Poetry. I ran the 2013 Tolkien and 2014 WW1 Poetry Spring Schools at Oxford, and co-organised (with Professor Carolyne Larrington) the 2018 Summer School on Fantasy Literature.
Moving from Old English into medievalism I developed my research on the writer J. R. R. Tolkien. I have worked extensively on his fiction and manuscripts of publishing on his interactions with the poem 'The Wanderer', 'The Battle of Maldon', interviews with the BBC, and editing the Blackwells/Wiley Companion to J R R Tolkien (2014; revised edition scheduled for 2021), and two editions (with E. Solopova) of The Keys of MIddle-earth. I also edited the Routledge Major Works four-volume set on Tolkien.
I teach (or have taught): Old English, WW1 Poetry, Tolkien, Fantasy Literature, and digital humanities.
My current projects are:
* Lockdown2020 - crowd-sourcing experiences of Oxford staff and students through the pandemic [http://lwf.it.ox.ac.uk/s/lockdown/page/index]
* 'Their Finest Hour' - crowd-sourcing WW2 memories and objects
* Public Engagement in Research: Fantasy Literature Podcasting
* Devices4Schools - University initiative to donate unwanted IT to schools in deprived areas
I am also the Deputy CIO of the University's IT Services.
Old English, Tolkien, WW1 Literature, Humanities Computing
