Plenary Speakers
Karin Kukkonen
University of Oslo, Norway
Karin Kukkonen is Professor in Comparative Literature at the University of Oslo (Norway). She works on the novel and its history from the angle of cognitive narratology and cognitive poetics. Her publications include Probability Designs: Literature and Predictive Processing (OUP, 2020), How the Novel Found its Feet: 4E Cognition and Eighteenth-Century Fiction (OUP, 2019) and A Prehistory of Cognitive Poetics: Neoclassicism and the Novel (OUP, 2017). Currently, Kukkonen prepares a monograph on the role of chance and contingency in literary, creative writing. She is a member of the Academy of Europe and leader of the Literature, Cognition and Emotions (LCE) initiative at the University of Oslo.
Title of the Talk: “Contingent Selves in Creative Writing.”
Raymond Mar
University of York, Canada
Dr. Mar received his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto and is currently a full professor of psychology at York University. His lab investigates how imagined experiences affect how we think, feel, and behave in the real-world, with a particular focus on how stories engage our imagination. The various tools of neuroscience, personality psychology, social cognition, and cognitive psychology are all employed to investigate these topics. He received the Tom Trabasso Young Investigator award, the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany, and held a Fulbright Canada Research Chair at the University of Southern California.
Website link: http://www.yorku.ca/mar/
Title of the Talk: “Empirical Research on Engaging with Stories.”
Ralf Schneider
Aachen University, Germany
Ralf Schneider is Professor and Chair of English Literature at RWTH Aachen University (Germany). He has worked in British literary and cultural studies, and contributed to cognitive narratology since the early 2000s, with a special focus on the reception of literary characters. In 2019 he co-founded the Aachen Center for Cognitive and Empirical Literary Studies (ACCELS). He is co-editor, with Alice Bell and Richard Gerrig, of the new Routledge Focus on Dialogues in Cognitive Literary Studies book series and, with Jan Alber, of the Routledge Companion to Literature and Cognitive Studies (in preparation).
Website link: https://www.accels.rwth-aachen.de/cms/~cidrb/ACCELS/?lidx=1
Title of the Talk: “Constellations and Networks: Response to Literary Characters Beyond Empathy, Identification, and Perspective-Taking – A New Approach.”
Funded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain (MICINN) and the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO)
Comisión de Extensión y Publicaciones Departamento de Filología Moderna. Universidad de Alcalá