Dr Tom Abba
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Role:
Department staff:
Research staff:
- Qualifications:
- PhD
- Position:
- Professor of Narrative Technologies
- Department:
- ACE - Art and Design
- Telephone:
- +441173285821
- Email:
- Tom.Abba@uwe.ac.uk
- Social media:
-
About me
My research sits at the intersection of studio practice and critical inquiry. Central and persistent questions concern how narrative operates in and through material form — how a book, a sequence of images or a cross-modal experience can produce meaning that exceeds what any single medium could carry alone.
My funded research includes Ambient Literature (AHRC, 2016-18), established to investigate the locational and technological future of the book; and Immersive Arts (Co-Investigator. AHRC, 2024–27), supporting over 200 UK-based artists and organisations to explore the creative potential of virtual, augmented and mixed reality technologies.
Area of expertise
Tom’s personal research addresses the intersection of technological innovation, immersive experiences and narrative form. He works as a practice-based researcher in the School of Arts at UWE, and leads the School’s response to the Research Excellence Framework as it pertains to Art & Design practice and research.
Tom has developed ongoing collaborations with key figures in the publishing sector, challenging accepted orthodoxies surrounding the impact of digital technologies on writing and publishing. He was named one of the Bookseller’s 40 Most Disruptive Innovators in Publishing, and remains the only academic on that list.
He led the Ambient Literature project from 2016-2018, pioneering new forms of narrative engagement for the publishing industry, producing work that asked how writing, reading and the idea of the book itself might change when technology is used to design stories, rather than just present them.
The Ambient Literature programme now constitutes an ongoing and sustained body of practice-led research, pioneering new forms for writing immersive literary experiences, and responding to both commercial and creative imperatives.
From Bitter Ground reflects the space between the landscape of the weird and what we think of as real, composed as a set of artists’ books providing a bridge into an immersive, location-responsive experience.
These Pages Fall Like Ash tells a story that weaves between an apparently conventional print book and a digital, ephemeral text emerging from the streets around you. Written with Duncan Speakman, Emile Grenier, Nick Harkaway and Neil Gaiman, the project now has readers in 29 countries across all continents.
Publications
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