Inaugural Professorial Lecture – Professor David Ciccoricco: Screenshots from the Literary Apocalypse
Thursday, 27th November 2025 5:30 PM - 7:30 PM
University of Otago, Archway 1 Lecture Theatre, Dunedin
About Professor David Ciccoricco's research
David Ciccoricco’s research frames literature as a valuable mode of inquiry into the workings of cognition and draws on cognitive science and philosophy of mind to establish how fictional minds help explain actual ones. His scholarship illustrates how literary narratives across media continue to serve as fundamental resources for understanding others and ourselves.
His current work weaves cultural, computational, and cognitive conceptions of simulation to gain new insights on empathy, identity, and the relationship between minds and machines.
He is the author of two books that have helped shape the field of digital literary studies. His landmark Reading Network Fiction (2007) provides foundational concepts for narrative studies in digitally networked environments. It offers close analyses of pre-Web and Web-based digital fiction and charts evolving storytelling practices in digital culture. Refiguring Minds in Narrative Media (2015) is among the first to apply contemporary cognitive theories of attention, perception, memory, and emotion to narratives across media, from print novels to digital narratives and story-driven videogames.
David’s work demonstrates that stories in any medium can still nourish creative expression and cultivate critical reflection – and he offers hope for the future of the human imagination in a digital culture.
This lecture will be followed with light refreshments, tea, coffee and juice.
Livestream information
This event will be livestreamed from 5:25pm, 27 November, 2025.