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Dr Rose Harris-Birtill

Positions held:
  • Director and Head of Editorial, Open Library of Humanities; Department of English, Theatre and Creative Writing
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  • Overview

    Overview

    Highlights

    • Dr Rose Harris Birtill is the Director and Managing Editor at the Open Library of Humanities, an open access scholarly publisher based in the Department of English, Theatre and Creative Writing. Rose holds a PhD in English from the University of St Andrews, where she is also an Honorary Lecturer, and is Head of Editorial at OLH.

      She is the editor of the C21 Literature journal special collection on David Mitchell, author of David Mitchell's Post-Secular World: Buddhism, Belief and the Urgency of Compassion (2019), and Secretary for the British Association of Contemporary Literature Studies.

      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 is also the Secretary for the British Association for Contemporary Literary Studies, and is the current UK National Expert for the European Reference Index for the Humanities and Social Sciences (ERIH PLUS).

    Qualifications

    Web profiles

    Administrative responsibilities

    • Director and Head of Editorial at the Open Library of Humanities

    Honours and awards

    ORCID

    0000-0002-5590-4408
  • Research

    Research

    Research interests

    • Rose’s research interests include contemporary and twentieth-century literatures, time, globalisation, experimental and visual narratives, digital storytelling, Tibetan Buddhism and diaspora, world literature, global feminisms, literature in performance, speculative and science 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 (OLH). I have served as the Managing Editor for the journal OLH since 2019, where 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

    “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 Founder’s Prize for this research, this has been reprinted in the society’s triennial edited volume Time's Urgency: The Study of Time XVI (Brill: 2019, eds. C. Montemeyor and R. Daniel). https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004408241_004.

    “‘A row of screaming Russian dolls’: Escaping the Panopticon in David Mitchell’s number9dream.” SubStance: A Review of Theory and Literary Criticism 44.1. 136 (2015): 55-70. Print. 7,000 words. http://doi.org/10.1353/sub.2015.0007.

    Book chapters

    “Understanding computation time: A critical discussion of time as a computational performance metric.” Time in Variance: The Study of Time XVII. Eds. Paul Harris, Arkadiusz Misztal and Jo Alyson Parker. Leiden: Brill, 2021. Co-authored with Dr. David Harris-Birtill, School of Computer Science, University of St Andrews. Print. 7,500 words.

    “‘Looking down time’s telescope at myself’: reincarnation and global futures in David Mitchell’s fictional worlds.” Time's Urgency: The Study of Time XVI. Eds. C. Montemeyor and R. Daniel. Leiden: Brill, 2019. 16-34. Print. 7,500 words.

    “Voicing Tragedy in David Mitchell’s Libretti: Wake and Sunken Garden.” David Mitchell: Contemporary Critical Perspectives. Eds. Wendy Knepper and Courtney Hopf. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019. 117-132. Print. 6,500 words.

    Review essays

    “Jenni Fagan: The Sunlight Pilgrims.” Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction 46.3 128 (2017). Print. 1,500 words.

    “David Mitchell: Slade House.” Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction 45.2 124 (2016): 119-121. Print. 1,500 words.

    “David Mitchell: The Bone Clocks.” Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction 44.1. 120 (2015): 131-134. Print. 1,500 words.

  • Publications

    Publications

    Article

    Book

    Book Section

    Conference Item

    Editorial

    Other

    External Repositories

  • Business and community

    Business and community

    I have media training.