Transmit Culture: Ebooks, Audiobooks, and Reading for Wellbeing

What happens to reading for wellbeing when the books aren’t on paper, or a reading community meets in a virtual space? How, and why, do reading practices change, and what does this mean for readers and the institutions that support them? In this talk, Dr Laura Dietz (University College London Centre for Publishing) will present findings from the Co-Creating Digital Bibliotherapy project, funded by UCL’s Grand Challenge of Mental Health & Wellbeing, and from her recent monograph E-books and ‘Real Books’: Digital Reading and the Experience of Bookness.

Dr. Dietz’s current research focusses on screen reading, digital publishing, and contemporary authorship, with a particular focus on how
reputation and legitimacy (including the book-status of digital books) affect reading experiences. She edits the Digital Literary Culture gathering of the series Cambridge Elements in Publishing and Book Culture (Cambridge University Press). She has developed Co-creating Digital Bibliotherapy, a current UCL Grand Challenges project in partnership with The Reading Agency, UCL IoE, and the Open University.