Launch of Digital Hub Reading Club

1 March 2022

We cordially invite you to the launch of the Digital Hub Reading Club, a new initiative created by Jesus College’s Digital Hub Student Committee in collaboration with SOUTHWORKS Career Development Fellow for the Hub, Dr Janina Schupp. 

SOUTHWORKS Career Development Fellow for the Digital Hub, Dr Janina Schupp (far left) with members of our Digital Hub Student Committee (from l-r) Andrzej Stuart-Thompson, Arun Joseph, Kyu Min Huh and Sarah Fengler

 

The new Digital Hub Reading Club seeks to provide a fun, dynamic and accessible space for discovering contemporary fiction on AI, robots, and everything digital. It is part of a programme of events and activities being delivered in the build up to the opening of the Cheng Kar Shun Digital Hub later in 2022.

Everybody is welcome, and each gathering will be relaxed and informal, with cakes and refreshments. The club hopes to become a community of book lovers, and people can come along even if they haven’t yet had a chance to (fully or even partially) read the book – though do beware of spoilers! Reading packs will be sent out for each book under discussion, to get club attendees started.

Co-founder of the club Andrzej Stuart-Thompson says, “For now, what we hope, above all, is to foster the enthusiastic exchange of ideas – whether that be at the micro-level of emotional responses to the book and reflections on the power and subtleties of the words on the page, or else at the macro-level of interpreting broader social concerns, and philosophical and scientific ideas that emerge from the texts. We hope that all reading club members and attendees will be keen to get involved and help us to shape and galvanise this initiative, both now and in the future.”

 

The Digital Hub Reading Club Launch takes place on Wednesday 9th March 2022, at 5pm in the Jesus College Ship Street Centre.

At the launch event, the club will be discussing its first book, Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson (2019), a reimagining of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818). It embraces themes of robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), and transhumanism. A reading pack for the book can be accessed here.  

If you’re interested in joining the club, please register your interest by emailing Andrzej Stuart-Thompson at andrzej.stuart-thompson@jesus.ox.ac.uk

Andrzej adds, “Looking ahead to next academic year, 2022-2023, we are planning an exciting celebration of over two hundred years (and beyond) of adaptations and responses to the Frankenstein story, with ‘FrankenstAIn 2.0: Rebooting Frankenstein for the Digital Era’. Through the Digital Hub Reading Club, we hope to build up a data bank of ideas to accompany this festival which will inspire people to get involved with their own creative reworkings of the tale, in a myriad of forms.”

 

About the Cheng Kar Shun Digital Hub

The Cheng Kar Shun Digital Hub at Jesus College is an exciting new physical and virtual space in the centre of Oxford, bringing together the brightest minds and the curious.

Through a wide range of interactive events, talks, workshops and performances led by our researchers and collaborators, we aim to demystify the digital age, help you to learn new digital skills and shine a light on how advances in digital technologies are transforming our understanding of the world around us.

The Hub also champions the power of collective endeavour by enabling our academics at all stages of their career to study using innovative digital tools and methodologies, and to work in collaboration across disciplines, institutes and time zones on research that has a global impact.

Read more.