Alfie Bown

Alfie Bown is Lecturer in Digital Media Culture and Technology. He joined Royal Holloway after being Assistiant Professor at the Hang Seng University of Hong Kong and Lecturer at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He has also taught at The University of Manchester and Liverpool John Moores University. 

He is author of The Playstation Dreamworld (Polity, 2017) and In the Event of Laughter (Bloomsbury, 2018) among other things. His most recent book is an edited collection of essays entitled Post-Memes: Seizing the Memes of Production, out in late 2019 with Punctum Press. The collection brings together academics, journalists and meme artists to discuss the political and cultural importance of the meme.

His principle research interests are in psychoanalysis, digital media, critical theory and videogames, though he has also published in nineteenth-century studies, film studies and medieval studies. He supervises PhD theses on topics ranging from science fiction and videogames to digital activism, literature and philosophy and his undergraduate teaching focusses on digital storytelling, digital histories and the role of the digital in geopolitical and cultural relations. 

Alfie also writes journalism for places such as The Guardian, The Paris Review, The Independent, New Statesman and Newsweek. He is editor of the international cultural studies collective Everyday Analysis, which has published several books including Why Are Animals Funny? (2014), Twerking to Turking (2015) and Politactics (2016).

Alfie is the coordinator for the BA and BSc in Digital Media Culture and Technology and Media Arts Admissions Tutor.