Role
Professor of English Literature
Director, Centre for Transnational and Transcultural Research
Director, Digital Futures Lab
Since
January 2018

Biography

Sebastian “Bas” Groes is a writer, teacher, and scholar specialising in contemporary culture. He currently serves as Professor of English Literature and Director of the Centre for Transnational and Transcultural Research at the University of Wolverhampton in the United Kingdom. He is also Director of the Digital Futures Lab, which hosts several of Groes’ digital and computational projects.

Groes began his tenure at the University of Wolverhampton in January 2018. In addition to his professorship, he leads several significant research initiatives.

Research Initiatives

Leading research initiatives

AHRC

Computational Literary Studies UK

An AHRC-funded project building a computational literary studies infrastructure with partners at Oxford, Sheffield, Edinburgh and a host of European partners.

AHRC

The Memory Network

A research network funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Wellcome Trust, bringing together scientists, scholars, writers, and artists to explore memory in the digital age.

AHRC

Novel Perceptions

An AHRC-funded project aimed at investigating inclusivity and diversity within the literary canon.

Arts Council

Big Bookshare

An Arts Council funded project that examines inclusivity and diversity in the world of books.

Daiwa

UN/REAL: Anglo-Japanese Perspectives on Digital Inequality

A Daiwa Foundation funded project with Alex Goody exploring the digital divide in Japan and Britain, which is the basis for a forthcoming book proposal.

Arts Council

Write in the Head

An Arts Council funded project designing an online creative writing programme for people recovering from stroke.

Publications
10+ academic books authored and edited
Featured in
The Guardian · The Londonist · BBC News

Publications

Groes has an extensive publication record, authoring and editing over ten academic books. Works include The Making of London (2011), an analysis of London’s portrayal in contemporary literature; British Fictions of the Sixties (2016), a study of the literary landscape during the 1960s; and an edited volume exploring modern understandings of memory, Memory in the Twenty-First Century (2016).

His articles, reviews, and fiction have appeared in prominent outlets such as The Guardian, The Londonist, and BBC News. He has also collaborated with BBC Arts on the “Novels That Shaped Our World” engagement project.

His two most recent books are Right in the Head (2023), a stroke memoir that delves into the relationship between humans and their brains, and Writing Under Fire (2024), an edited collection with writing from Ukraine and the UK.

In progress
Four books

Current work

He is currently working on four books:

2027

The Novel Perceptions monograph

Palgrave, 2027.

A book on digital inequality across cultures

With Alex Goody.

Posthuman Plunder

With Laura Colombino.

A book with literary reflections on technological unemployment

Explore the research and publications

Books, essays, grants and doctoral supervision across modern fiction, digital humanities, and cognition.

Research & Publications