Post-digital Reading Cultures: Mapping the material, institutional, social, and meaning-making dimensions of contemporary reading
The interdisciplinary network aims to develop a conceptual framework for understanding how reading is practised and valued today.
Reading takes place across shifting media, modalities, settings, people, and institutions. Studying reading culture in the post-digital age necessitates the integration of diverse disciplines, theoretical perspectives, and methodological approaches. The network brings together reading researchers from Danish and Swedish universities who approach reading from areas such as media studies, comparative literature, publishing studies, embodied cognition, sociology of literature and library and information science.
The overall research question guiding the network is: How is reading practised, experienced, and valued in the post-digital age, across different material, institutional, social, and interpretive contexts?
To frame the complexity of reading practices in the post-digital age, the network will work towards developing and refining a theoretical and methodological model that identifies and interrelates four key dimensions of reading culture. Based on the state of the art, the model is open, iterative, and cross-disciplinary – providing a shared framework that remains sensitive to empirical variation, overlaps, and theoretical nuance.
The model contains the following dimensions: 1. material-technical dimension (focuses on media, formats, and technologies that shape how reading is accessed and experienced, including print, digital, and audio formats, platforms, and interfaces), 2. institutional-economic dimension (addresses the systems and actors that structure and value reading—publishers, libraries, schools, critics, platforms – and the ideologies and discourses that legitimize certain reading practices over others), 3. social-cultural dimension (explores reading as a relational and culturally embedded practice, shaped by communities, networks, and forms of sociality such as sharing, discussion, and affective engagement across digital and physical spaces), and 4. hermeneutic-experiential dimension (examines how meaning is created in reading through the interaction between text, reader, context, and medium, and how reading is shaped by attention, emotion, embodiment, and setting).
As a shared conceptual tool, the model will be collectively developed, and critically revised through workshops, collaborative publications, and cross-disciplinary dialogues. It offers a starting point for asking how reading is enacted, valued, and understood across cultural, institutional, and technological contexts.
Workshops
- 26. June 2026: Start up workshop
- 27. November 2026: Post-digital reading culture framework
- June 2029: Closing workshop
Symposium
- April 2027: Materialities and meaning making of post-digital reading culture
- November 2027: Institutional and social aspects of post-digital reading research
- April 2028: Institutional/economic aspects of post-digital reading research
Conference
- Spring 2029: Post-digital reading culture – a cross-disciplinary approach
UCPH researchers
| Name | Title | Phone | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gitte Balling | Associate Professor | +4535321370 | |
| Stefanie Heine | Associate Professor | +4535336223 |
Other researchers
| Name | Title |
|---|---|
| Johanne Gormsen Smidt | Postdoc, University of Southern Denmark |
| Karin Lundin | Doctoral student, Lund University |
| Sarah Kärrholm | Associate professor, Lund University |
| Sara Linkis | Associate professor, Lund University |
| Sarah Mygind | Associate professor, Aarhus University |
| Theresa Schilhab | Associate professor, Aarhus University |
Funding
Project period: 1 June 2026 - 30 June 2029
PI: Gitte Balling, Department of Communication
Co-PI: Sara Kärrholm, Lund University