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Dr Rose Harris-Birtill

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  • Overview

    Overview

    Highlights

    • Dr Rose Harris Birtill is the Editorial Director at the Open Library of Humanities, an open access scholarly publisher based at Birkbeck, University of London. Rose holds a PhD in English from the University of St Andrews, where she is also an Honorary Senior Lecturer, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA).

      She is Editor-in-Chief of the Open Library of Humanities Journal, author of David Mitchell's Post-Secular World: Buddhism, Belief and the Urgency of Compassion (2019), and has served as Guest Editor for special editions in C21 Literature journal and Kronoscope: Journal for the Study of Time.

      Rose is an invited member of Crossref's Membership and Fees Committee, and is the UK National Expert for the European Reference Index for the Humanities and Social Sciences (ERIH PLUS). She is also a full member of the Council of Editors of Learned Journals, and an invited member of its Advisory Board for the Mellon Foundation funded project ‘Re-Imagining Peer Review’, which aims to advance equitable and inclusive practices in peer review and scholarly journal publishing within the humanities.

      Rose is an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (AFHEA), an accredited Masters-level professional teaching qualification awarded at the University of St Andrews, aligning with the UK Professional Standards Framework (UKPSF). She also holds the International Society for the Study of Time (ISST) New Scholar Prize, the Frank Muir Prize for Writing, and a McCall MacBain Teaching Excellence Award. Rose has also served as the Secretary for the British Association for Contemporary Literary Studies.

    Web profiles

    Administrative responsibilities

    • Editorial Director at the Open Library of Humanities

    Professional memberships

    • • Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, April 2026 – present.
      • Member of the Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ), February 2026 – present.
      • CELJ invited Advisory Board member for Mellon Foundation funded-project 'Re-Imagining Peer Review', advancing inclusive practices in scholarly peer review. May 2026 – present.
      • Secretary of the British Association for Contemporary Literary Studies (BACLS), 2018 – 2022.
      • Member of British Association for Contemporary Literary Studies (BACLS), June 2017 – present.
      • Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (AFHEA), May 2016 – present.
      • Member of the International Society for the Study of Time (ISST), May 2016 – present.
      • Member of Modern Language Association (MLA), 2019 – 2021.
      • Member of Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS), February 2011 – present.

    Honours and awards

  • Research

    Research

    Research interests

    • Rose’s research interests include contemporary and twentieth-century literatures and poetics, open acccess publishing, AI and diverse intelligences, time, globalisation, the post-secular, digital storytelling, Tibetan Buddhism and diaspora, world literature, literature in performance, speculative fiction, and critical and cultural theory.

    Research overview

    Books

    David Mitchell’s Post-Secular World: Buddhism, Belief and the Urgency of Compassion. Published worldwide by Bloomsbury Academic in January 2019 (125,000 words). Academic monograph on David Mitchell’s complete works, including his novels, short stories and operas, analysing the post-secular Buddhist influences that draw his fictions into a self-contained ethical world. Accepted in December 2017 for publication by Bloomsbury senior publisher David Avital and series editors Prof. Bryan Cheyette and Prof. Martin Paul Eve for Bloomsbury Academic’s New Horizons in Contemporary Writing series.

    Reader 1: ‘Absolutely commanding, relentlessly thorough, meticulously researched. This is a landmark—a truly remarkable achievement sure to be praised and appreciated by Mitchell readers and scholars of contemporary literature alike.’ Reader 2: ‘A major scholarly undertaking. It convinced me that there is nobody in the world – save perhaps the author himself – who knows as much about the collected and uncollected fiction of David Mitchell. It is hard not to see this becoming a central reference point within a field that is rapidly growing. All in all, this is a well-written and amazingly well-researched book.’

    Reviews include: C21 Literature 7(1): 1-4; KronoScope 19(1): 62-65; Culture Mandala 13(2): 32-33.

    Journal special editions

    Open Library of Humanities journal (OLHJ). As Editor-in-Chief at OLHJ, I am responsible for all aspects of the editorial publishing process, from commissioning interdisciplinary and specialist journal special collections to manuscript selection, overseeing peer-reviews, and managing editorial and publication workflows. See https://olh.openlibhums.org/.

    KronoScope: Journal for the Study of Time 19.2, Time and the Arts special edition (Autumn 2019). I serve as an Editor for the International Society for the Study of Time (ISST) peer-reviewed international journal, and edited its special edition on Time in the Arts. See https://doi.org/10.1163/15685241-12341438.

    C21 Literature: Journal of 21st Century Writings 6.3, David Mitchell special edition (October 2018). Following the David Mitchell Conference 2017, I served as an invited guest editor for a special edition of this peer-reviewed open access journal. See https://c21.openlibhums.org/issue/39/info/.

    Journal articles

    “Editorial Freedom in Academic Publishing: On the First Decade of the Open Library of Humanities.” Open Library of Humanities 11.2 (2025). Open access. https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.25841.

    “The Future of the Open Library of Humanities: Milestones, Governance, and Sustainability.” Open Library of Humanities 7.1 (2021). Open access. https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.4726.

    “Introducing the Time and the Arts Special Edition: a Note from the Editor.” KronoScope: Journal for the Study of Time 19.2 (2019): 107-109. Print. 1,000 words. https://doi.org/10.1163/15685241-12341438.

    “Introducing the David Mitchell Special Edition of C21 Literature.” C21 Literature 6.3 (2018). 3,000 words. Open access. https://doi.org/10.16995/c21.672.

    “‘Looking down time’s telescope at myself’: reincarnation and global futures in David Mitchell’s fictional worlds.” KronoScope: Journal for the Study of Time 17.2 (2017): 163-181. Print. 7,500 words. Following the award of the ISST

  • Publications

    Publications

    Article

    Book

    Book section

    Conference item

    Editorial

    Other

    External Repositories