Researchers from our Institute for Medical Humanities have taken our innovative ReaderBank project to the Jaipur Literature Festival in Rajasthan, India.
A collaboration with the Edinburgh International Book Festival, ReaderBank is the world's most ambitious study of imagination, reading and well-being.
It seeks to explore how people imagine when they read, how fictional characters are represented in the mind, and what the reading experience can tell us about health and wellbeing.
The Jaipur Literature Festival is the world's largest literary festival, attracting 500,000 in-person visitors per year, and audiences of up to 25 million online.
By bringing ReaderBank to this global stage, our researchers have been shedding light on the nature of the reading imagination across the world and revealing how experiences of reading differ across communities and cultures.
Uncovering the mysteries of the reading mind
ReaderBank builds on research led by Marco Bernini, in our Department of English Studies, and Ben Alderson-Day, in our Department of Psychology, which explored how people hear (or don't hear) the voices of characters when they read.
These studies established six different reader types and four different forces of the imagination, highlighting how diverse imaginative experiences in reading are.
This is important for understanding reading's role in all our lives, its impact on our wellbeing and its implications for our mental health.
Leading the way in interdisciplinary health research
Durham is fast becoming a world-leader in innovative cross-sector and interdisciplinary health research.
The Jaipur ReaderBank team, which featured Professor in Practice Nick Barley, psychologist Georgia Punton, creative facilitator Mary Robson, and research assistant Arya Ray, is funded by an AHRC Impact Accelerator Award.
The project is an output of Durham's Discovery Research Platform for Medical Humanities.
The Platform is supported by the largest grant ever made by Wellcome for humanities research, recognising the transformative power and value humanities disciplines can bring to our understanding of health and human experience.
