Contact
Biography
ORCID iD .
Spencer is part of the leadership team for the Faculty of Art's Creative & Digital Research Cluster. He is a Fellow of and a member of the UKRI Talent Peer Review College. He has been the Director of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, Head of the Drama & Creative Writing section, and programme director for BA English with Creative Writing.
His monograph, , was published in October 2024 as part of Bloomsbury's Digital Cultures series (paperback May 2026). Earlier, his work was released in 2019, while his novel debuted with Macmillan in 2005. He was guest editor of , Anglica: An International Journal of English Studies, 33(2), October 2024.
Recent grant capture includes 'Responsible use of AI in the creation, archiving, reactivation and conservation of artworks and their archives' (February 2025 - February 2028, Co-I); and 'Creating a Dynamic Archive of Responsible Ecosystems in the context of Creative AI' (February-July 2024, Co-I). These projects are part of the AHRC's programme which is looking to integrate Arts, Humanities and Social Science research more fully into the development of Responsible AI ecosystems.
Spencer teaches creative writing at both undergraduate and postgraduate level.
LinkedIn:
Expertise Summary
Spencer's expertise includes creative writing (the novel and the short story); historical and experimental writing; the creative economy; and the digital creative / digital humanities nexus. Particular areas of interest within these themes include digital/hypertext, postdigital and immersive fiction; literary geography and digital heritage.
Outreach and Public Engagement
Recent outreach activities include: guest speaker on the New Media in Contemporary Culture Series, Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw ('Metamodernism and the Postdigital Condition', June 2022); keynote speaker at ': Book launch and panel discussion' at M Shed, Bristol (2021); ': An Immersive / VR Sprint in Nottingham's Lace Market' (2019) and 'Nottingham Pasts and Presents: A Heritage and Smart Data Immersive Experience' with Nottingham City Council (2020/21). In November 2017 Spencer led workshop for the Being Human Festive at the National Videogame Arcade. In March 2017 Spencer was involved with The Writers' Conference in association with , hosted by the School of English. On 31st October 2015 he led a Gothic workshop 'Cloaked in Ink' as part of Sheffield's literary festival. More generally, Spencer has hosted creative writing workshops in a number of locations, including Glamorganshire Record Office; he has led psychogeographical derives across Cardiff, following the lost route of the Glamorganshire Canal; and he chaired the English-language Panel for the 2012 .
Teaching Summary
Undergraduate Modules: Creative Writing Practice; Advanced Writing Practice; Digital Story: Craft & Technique
Postgraduate Modules: Learning to Read: Criticism for Creative Writers; Writing Workshop: Fiction; Practice and Practitioners
Research Summary
I am particularly interested in the way creative writing can be understood as a form of affective intervention in response to critical social and cultural issues. This research focus is inherently… read more
Recent Publications
JORDAN, S., 2024. Bloomsbury.
JORDAN, S., ed., 2024. Institute of English Studies University of Warsaw.
JORDAN, S., 2021. . In: JOSIE GILL, CATRIONA MCKENZIE and EMMA LIGHTFOOT, eds., Writing Remains: New Intersections of Archaeology, Literature and Science Bloomsbury. 95-116
JORDAN, S., 2021. . In: EVANS, ANNE-MARIE and KRAMER, KALEY, eds., Time, the City, and the Literary Imagination Palgrave Macmillan. 169-185
Current Research
I am particularly interested in the way creative writing can be understood as a form of affective intervention in response to critical social and cultural issues. This research focus is inherently transdisciplinary and practice-based, embracing a range of disciplines, including archaeology, history, literature and linguistics. For example, my chapter 'Digital Storytelling and Performative Memory' examines the way digitally-mediated place writing can be used at the individual and community level to engage with the historical legacies of colonialism, offering new forms of performative mapping. And my chapter 'Creative Facticity and Hyper-Archaeology' makes a case for innovative forms of historicised place writing (what I term psychogeography 2.0) in which the concept of an embodied 'performative presence' remains paramount to how the archaeological record is socially constructed.
Underpinning all this research, however, is my evolving concept of postdigitality as a fundamental characteristic of twenty-first century creativity, a thesis I explore in my monograph, Postdigital Storytelling: Poetics, Praxis, Research (2019). The book makes two critical claims: first, that this new creative paradigm reflects the emerging poetics of a postdigital condition that is inherently transmedial and hybridic, and in which the digital and the non-digital domains are increasingly entangled. And second, that this new creative modality is itself a fundamental feature of far broader ontological shifts, a movement from postmodernity to what I term metamodernism. As I argue in the book, affective storytelling has never been so vital or important to our continued existence as an Earth-bound species.
Current Grant/Award Capture:
'Responsible use of AI in the creation, archiving, reactivation and conservation of artworks and their archives' Co-I, UKRI (AHRC) , 拢922,256.79 (February 2025 - February 2028). Project website.
'Creating a Dynamic Archive of Responsible Ecosystems in the context of Creative AI' Co-I, UKRI (AHRC) , 拢214,160 (February - July 2024). Project website.
'Immersive storytelling and the Theatre Royal'. Digital Nottingham 'City as Lab' fund, 拢5,000 (October 2022-March 2023).
Faculty of Arts Research Fellowship (internal), February - July 2023.
'Immersive Hub: Live Experiential and Digital Diversification, Nottingham' (LEADD:NG)' ERDF, 拢220,000 (co-i) (2021-23).
'Future of the high street augmenter project in partnership with Nottingham City Council' , 拢15,304 (January - April 2021).
Faculty PVC Funded Research Leave August 2020 - February 2021. 'Nottingham Pasts and Presents: A Heritage and Smart Data Immersive Experience' (with Nottingham City Council).
'' RPA-funded 拢5,000 (May 2019). Partner: Rachel Jacobs, (artist-led collective).
'Lace2Place: An Immersive / VR Sprint in Nottingham's Lace Market' . RPA-funded project 拢14,763 (November 2018- February 2019).
Past Research
Past Grant Capture
'Trauma: Immersive Storytelling' (AHRC , October 2017). PI Dr Spencer Jordan. Not funded but rated 4 (excellent)
Telling stories of trauma: Dealing with PTSD through narrative 拢30,000 (March 2017) Internal research project led by Dr Nigel Hunt.
(November 2015) Funded through the AHRC The Academic Book of the Future programme. A 糖心原创 collaboration between publishers, researchers and librarians. Events included the Book Sprint and 'Sprinting into the Open Future' panel discussion.
(November 2014) A community is built of stories. is a funded project, led by Dr Spencer Jordan with Dr Gareth Loudon. The project seeks to explore the intersection between storytelling and cityspace, what de Certeau terms "a space of enunciation". People's Journeys / Teithiau Pobl explores how a location-based app can open up and sustain a "space of enunciation" for a community of users, allowing them to re-engage with their own sense of "home" and "belonging".
(July 2013) In July 2013 the team (Dr Kate Watson, Dr Spencer Jordan and Dr Mike Reddy) led a digitally-mediated d茅rive across Cardiff, following the now defunct (and largely disappeared) course of the Glamorganshire Canal. It involved traversing a variety of terrains, including St David's shopping centre and Butetown, before finishing at the site of the Canal's Sea Lock, beneath the A4232 flyover. In total there were 25 participants from all walks of life, from young children to the retired. The project was nominated for the .
(2009) Lead Bid Writer & Project Consultant, 拢177,000 (JISC).
(2007) Lead Bid Writer & Project Manager, 拢95,000 (JISC).
(2004) Lead Bid Writer & Project Manager, 拢10,000 Funding (JISC).
Recent Conference Papers
Jordan, S. (June 2022) 'Metamodernism and the Postdigital Condition' New Media in Contemporary Culture Series, Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw. [Guest Speaker]
Jordan, S. (June 2021) ''To Keep his Memory Green': The reinvention of Edward Colston in the late 19th Century' . M Shed, Bristol.
Jordan, S. (May 2019) 'Lace2Place - A VR Sprint of Nottingham's Lace Market' , 糖心原创 (Creative and Digital RPA).
Jordan, S. (Sept 2018) 'The Lifespan of the Digital Text' Bodleian Libraries' Centre for Digital Scholarship, University of Oxford.
Jordan, S. (June 2018) 'Digital Narratives as Psychogeography: the Spatial and Performative Textualities of Life-Writing' at Biography and Public History: Constructing Historical Narratives through LifeWriting, University Of Nottingham
Jordan, S. (January 2017) 'Creative Facticity and "Hyper-Archaeology": the Performative Textualities of Psychogeography' at , University of Bristol.
Jordan, S. (2016) 'From space to place: creative writing and performative memory in the smart city' at Memory and Postcolonial Studies: Synergies and New Directions, Memory and Postcolonial Studies Symposium, 糖心原创, June 10th.