In January 2025, the Turing Liaison team, based in the Jean Golding Institute for interdisciplinary data science, organised a book launch for the new AI and Literature Routledge Handbook.
The Handbook was co-edited by Genevieve Liveley, a Professor of Classics at the University of Bristol, and a Turing Fellow. “It brings together 30 new and exciting ideas about the incredible intersection between AI and Literature”, says Genevieve. “We’ve got Computer Scientists, artists, poets and some of the leading names in AI Science”.
This Handbook combines early career contributors with some of the best-known names in the digital humanities and computational literary studies. “I think the book does this amazing thing where it has all these different minds and ways of coming at the topic,” says Victoria Punch, a book contributor and a PhD researcher at the Universities of Bristol and Exeter. “I think there is always something really exciting about getting together with people from different disciplines.”
The launch was hosted at the SS Great Britain in Bristol – a heritage site and one of the most important engineering experiments that changed the flow of information, ideas, fashion, culture and literature. Similarly, this Handbook was another important experiment in what feels like a transformative moment in history – the rise of AI, and how this intersects across sectors.
“There’s never been a better time to look at AI,” says Kate Devlin, another book contributor and Professor of Artificial Intelligence & Society, King’s College London. “This book deals with many different aspects of how AI intersects with literature in a way that it has had its origins in the past in the stories we tell, right through to the science fiction fields we have today.”
AI and Literature explores a variety of theories and approaches when AI is deployed in literary contexts. “One of the reasons why science fiction is so important is that it helps us understand the stories that we tell about AI,” says co-editor, Will Slocombe, Reader in English, University of Liverpool. “We talk about technologies as if they are neutral things but they are surrounded by stories and discourse.”
It offers a fresh perspective on the past, present, and future of AI and literature that will appeal to students and scholars with relevant interests across a range of subjects, including AI Engineering, Classics, Computing, Digital Humanities, English, Ethics, Film and Television, Law, and Narratology.
Pick up your copy now: AI and Literature Routledge Handbook