Home Faculties & Schools School of Arts and Creative industries Staff Professor Alexis Weedon

Professor Alexis Weedon

Professor Emerita at the Research Institute for Media Arts and Performance

Alexis Weedon

Alexis was Director of the Research Institute for Media Arts and Performance from 2017 - 2024.

Alexis completed her doctorate at Oxford University and went into the publishing industry. She was recruited as one of the four Leverhulme funded research fellows for the Cambridge History of the Book in Britain project. In 1995 she co-founded Convergence: The Journal of Research into New Media Technologies with Julia Knight and they co-edited the journal until 2018.

She was founding Head of the School of Culture and Communication (2008-2017) and was Sub Dean Quality Assurance. In 2012 She became the University of Bedfordshire's UNESCO chair in New Media Forms of the Book and this was renewed in 2016. In this role she has contributed to the Humanistic futures of learning: Perspectives from UNESCO Chairs and UNITWIN Networks.

She was principal investigator on the 'Cross-Media Practices in the 1920s and 1930s' project researching the role of authors in the early days of writing for the radio and for film (2005-2009) and co-authored Elinor Glyn as Novelist, Moviemaker, Glamour Icon and Businesswoman (2014) as a direct result of the project. In 2016 she received a fellowship at the Harry Ransom Center, Austin Texas to work in the archive on early examples of transmedia authorship in the work of Clemence Dane and G.B. Stern, A.E.W Mason, Hugh Walpole, and the Selnick archive. This has recently been published in The Origins of Transmedia Storytelling in Early Twentieth Century Adaptation (2021).

She is a specialist in the use of quantitative methods in the study of the industry. She has a chapter in Blackwell's Companion to Book History on the topic and a historical essay on the economics of publishing in The Oxford Companion to the Book. She edited the five volume collection The History of the Book in the West (Ashgate 2010). Her research in new media forms of the book ranges from 'Books as Media' chapter in the Cambridge History of the Book: The Twentieth Century to augmented reality books.She has presented keynotes at the Love Across the Atlantic (2018) and the Australian Media Traditions Conference (2019).

In 2013 Alexis led the practice-led research group for 'Sherwood Rise' a research inquiry into the AR book is designed and realised by David Miller, story written by David Moorhead. Her work in new media storytelling has lead to consultancy with sole-traders, local SMEs and larger publishing and design agencies on applying mobile and digital innovation in their business.

She welcomes applicants for PhD study or collaborative research projects in the broad areas of cross-media publishing, new media and related areas (new media writing, gaming, publishing) related to twenty-first century industry challenges or UNESCO SDC goals. She also invites PhD applications in book history and literary production, economics of publishing and adaptation in the nineteenth and twentieth century. Application to work on writers or agents working across media such as Elinor Glyn, G.B. Stern, Clemence Dane, Hugh Walpole and A.E.W. Mason or others are especially welcome. She has been director of research for five post-doctoral research fellows and welcomes visiting scholars across these fields.

  • DPhil 'Argument and the Novel: The Dialectical Fiction of WH Mallock', University of Oxford, Linacre College
  • BA (Hons) English Studies, Loughborough University of Technology, first class

Books

  • 2021 The Origins of Transmedia Storytelling. Palgrave Macmillan. 978-3-030-72475-7
  • 2020 and Nicola Darwood, (ed) Retelling Cinderella: Cultural and Creative Transformations. Cambridge Scholars Press. 978-1-5275-5943-1
  • 2020 Darwood, Nicola, W.R. Owens and Alexis Weedon, Fiction and the Woman Question 1850-1930 (Cambridge Scholars)
  • 2020 Ashley, Tamara and Alexis Weedon, Developing a Sense of Place: The Role of the Arts in Regenerating Communities (UCL Press)
  • 2014 Barnett, Vincent L. and Weedon, Elinor Glyn as Novelist, Moviemaker, Glamour Icon and Businesswoman (Routledge) ISBN: 9781472421821
  • 2010 Weedon (ed) History of the Book in the West 1914-2000 (Routledge) ISBN 9780754627838
  • 2010 Colclough, Stephen and Weedon, eds History of the Book in the West 1800-1914 (Routledge) ISBN 9780754627760
  • 2010 Weedon, Alexis, general editor 5 volume series History of the Book in the West (Routledge)
  • 2003 Weedon,Alexis Victorian Publishing: The Economics of Book Production for a Mass Market (Routledge)
  • 1996 Bott, Michael and Weedon, British Book Trade Archives 1830-1939: A Location Register, History Of the Book On Demand Series (March). ISBN 0 9528078 1 5.

Refereed articles and book chapters since 2014

Sole authored except where specified:

  • 2020 'Women, suffrage, and Clemence Dane: a game of speculation', in Darwood N, Owen WR, Weedon A (ed(s).). Fiction and 'The Woman Question', London: Cambridge Scholar pp.123-154.
  • 2020 'The material culture of Cinderella: introducing the Cinderella Collection', in Darwood N, Weedon A (ed(s).). Retelling Cinderella: Cultural and Creative Transformations, edn, Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing pp.1-33.
  • 2020 'Interview with E17 Art Trail directors: Laura Kerry and Morag McGuire', in Ashley T, Weedon A (ed(s).). Developing a Sense of Place, London: UCL Press pp.56-70.
  • 2020 ‘Storytelling and Game Playing’ in Agnieszka Piotrowska (ed) Creative Practice Research in the Age of Neoliberal Hopelessness, Edinburgh University Press 9781474463560 July
  • 2020 and Karen Randell ‘Atlantic Liners, It Girls and Old Europe in Elinor Glyn’s Romantic Adventures’ in Barbara J. Bruckman, Ted Trott, and Deborah Jermyn, Love Across the Atlantic: Interdisciplinary Approaches to US-UK Romance in Popular Culture, Edinburgh University Press
  • 2020 ‘Restructuring the knowledge production value chain in publishing’ in Humanistic futures of learning: Perspectives from UNESCO Chairs and UNITWIN Networks, UNESCO. 203-206 ISBN 978-92-3-100369-1 unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000372577/PDF/372577eng.pdf.multi
  • 2019 with Gianndrea Poesio, ‘The Origins of the Broadbrow: Hugh Walpole and Russian Modernism in 1917’ in Book History 22 280-302 ISSN1098-7371
  • ‘The Uses of Quantification’ revised chapter in second edition of A Companion to Book History eds Simon Eliot and Jonathan Rose, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
  • 2019 ‘Books and other media’ in Andrew Nash and Clare Squires, Cambridge History of the Book in Britain : The Twentieth Century and Beyond, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  • 2018 ‘Story, Storyteller and Storytelling’ Special issue of Logos: Journal of the World Publishing Community, special issue by Caroline Davis and Vincent Trott on New Directions in Print Culture, 29 2-3: 46-53
  • Randell K. and Weedon A. (eds) 2018, ‘Elinor Glyn her life and Legacy’, special issue of Women a Cultural Review, 29.2. May.
  • 2018 and Karen Randell, ‘The special relationship and the allure of transatlantic travel in the work of Elinor Glyn’, Women a Cultural Review, 29:2 May
  • 2017 and Samantha Pearce, ‘Film adaptation for knowing audiences: Analysing fan on-line responses to the end of Breaking Dawn – Part 2’ (2012), Participations, Journal of audience reception studies, 14.2 November.
  • 2016 ‘The effect of emerging new media in book publishing: lessons from the origins of cross-media storytelling in the early twentieth century for contemporary transmedia researchers’ in Kenneth Womack and James M. Decker, Victorian Literary Cultures: Studies in Textual Subversion (Lanham, Maryland: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press and Rowman & Littlefield) pp.101-114.
  • 2015 and Karen Randell, ‘Reconfiguring Elinor Glyn: Ageing female experience and the origins of the ‘It Girl’, in Deborah Jermyn and Su Holmes Women, Celebrity Cultures and Aging (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
  • 2015 ‘Wheels of Desire: The Popular Adaptations of A.E.W. Mason’s Thrillers from 1900s to the 1930s’ in William Baker (ed.) Studies in Victorian and Modern Literature: A Tribute to John Sutherland (Lanham, Maryland: The Rowman & Littlefield Press. 2015) pp. 61-79.
  • 2014 and David Miller, Claudio Pires Franco, David Moorhead and Samantha Pearce, ‘Crossing media boundaries: Adaptations and new media forms of the book’, Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 20: 108-124, doi:10.1177/1354856513515968
  • 2014 and Gerrard, Teresa, ‘Working class women’s education in Huddersfield: A case study of the Female Educational Institute Library 1856-1857’ Information & Culture: A Journal of History 49.2 (2014): 234-264. Project MUSE. Web.
  • External examiner at the Universities of Bath Spa, City, Loughborough, Middlesex, Napier, Oxford Brookes and Westminster.
  • External panel member (Research degrees) Staffordshire University
  • Experienced examiner of PhDs, Professional Doctorates and MA by Research
  • Society of Theatre Research grant, 2017
  • Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, 2016
  • Leverhulme Post Doctoral Research Fellowship, Dr May Witwit
  • PG Studentship for Council for Assisting Refugee Academics May Witwit
  • PI In-kind funding World Book and Copyright Day annually from UK, 2002-2010.
  • PI AHRC grant Cross-media cooperation in Britain in 1920s and 1930s 2005-2009
  • Project leader of the University of Bedfordshire RAE Unit 66 submission 2008
  • PI Printing Historical Society, 2005
  • Co-I YOTA artist residency Eastern Arts Feb-May 2001.
  • Co-I Arts council Lottery grant 1999
  • PI Library of Congress grant 1999
  • Co-I East of England Arts 1999
  • PI Bibliographical Society 1994
  • PI British Academy 1990, 1992

T: +44 (0)1582 489031
E: alexis.weedon@beds.ac.uk