Marina Grishakova
Professor
Marina Grishakova's scholarly interests include theories and philosophy of literature, cognitive aesthetics, narratology, intermediality and interart studies, and the history of ideas and concepts in the humanities in the 20th century. Her current work focuses on complexity and theories of representation. She is also interested in the role of fiction and imagination as heuristic and exploratory tools. Among her recent publications are Intermediality and Storytelling (with M.-L. Ryan; De Gruyter, 2010); Theoretical Schools and Circles in the Twentieth-Century Humanities: Literary Theory, History, Philosophy (with S. Salupere; Routledge, 2015) Narrative Complexity: Cognition, Embodiment, Evolution (with M. Poulaki; University of Nebraska Press, 2019). She has been, and is still, chair or member of the steering and advisory boards of many professional associations, journals and book series, and has given a multitude of guest lectures in various universities across Europe.
Francesca Arnavas
Postdoctoral Researcher
Francesca finished her PhD in November 2018 at the University of York, with a thesis titled Cognitive Alice: Lewis Carroll's Alice Books in Dialogue with Narratology. A monograph based on her thesis was published by De Gruyter (2021). She has published several essays on the Alice books, and has also worked on Neo-Victorianism and adaptation. Her main research interests include narrative theory, cognitive narratology, unnatural narratology, Victorian literature, Victorian fairy tales, and postmodern fairy tales.
Marzia Beltrami
Postdoctoral Researcher
Marzia’s project investigates how the mind-body nexus can be imaginatively reshaped in fantastic narratives to explore ideas of subjectivity and the relationship with others and with the world at large from an ethical perspective. Her theoretical framework combines narrative ethics with cognitive and unnatural narratology. She holds a PhD in Italian studies from Durham University (2017) and was Visiting Research Fellow at the MHiC-Lab (Medical Humanities in Context) at Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3 in 2019/20. The monograph based on her doctoral research focusing on spatiality and plot theories is entitled Spatial Plots. Virtuality and the Embodied Mind in Baricco, Camilleri and Calvino, and will be published by Legenda in early 2021.
Siim Sorokin
Research Fellow (Culture Studies)
Siim finished their PhD in 2018 with a thesis titled Character Engagement and Digital Community Practice: A Multidisciplinary Study of "Breaking Bad." Siim's current research centers on online storytelling discourses, with an emphasis on cultural and social-material reception of narrative media, and on character and person engagement through the lens of externalist (anti-idealist, post-constructivist, and post-cognitivist) philosophies of mind. Their most recent publication, however, sketches a preliminary theoretical framework for the narrative aspects of "conspiracy theorizing," based on the discussions of the cruise ferry MS Estonia catastrophe in the conspiracy forum Para-Web.
Mattia Bellini
PhD Student
Mattia holds a master's degree in Modern Philology from the University of Milan, but his background includes experiences in business management and web design. His previous research topics include storytelling for video games, humanistic Human-Computer Interaction and Procedural Content Generation via Machine Learning. His current research at the University of Tartu focuses on complexity, interactive storytelling and narratology in video games. Mattia is member of the European COST Action 18230 - Interactive Narrative Design for Complexity Representation (INDCOR).
Silvia Kurr
PhD Student
Silvia holds a Master’s degree in Literature, Visual Culture and Film from Tallinn University and the Estonian Academy of Arts. Her scholarly interests include comparative literature, semiotics, art history, film, and intermedial studies. Silvia’s PhD project, Reading Between Codes: Ekphrasis in (Post)modernist Literature and Film, aims to shatter the boundaries between literary, film and art studies by applying the concept of ekphrasis beyond literature.
Artis Ostups
PhD Student
Artis is a researcher at the Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art of the University of Latvia, and a doctoral student at the University of Tartu. He holds a Master’s degree in Philosophy and is the editor-in-chief of the interdisciplinary journal Letonica. He has also written three poetry collections. Artis’s research interests include modernist and postmodernist literature, and trauma and memory studies. He is writing a dissertation on the heterogeneity of historical time in contemporary post-socialist fiction.
Dino Pozder
PhD Student
Dino received a broad interdisciplinary background ranging from Linguistics and Information Management (University of applied Sciences Karlsruhe) to Literature and Media Studies (University of Bayreuth). He attempts to utilize this versatile background and bundle its insights in his current PhD project at the University of Tartu, Gamification of Narratology. Dino is trying to locate narratology in modern intermedial and digital humanities, uncover its potential therein, and inspire a stronger interdisciplinary participation and collaboration.
Pinelopi Tzouva
PhD Student
Pinelopi holds Master’s degrees in Social and Cultural Anthropology and in Cultural Studies (both from the University of Leuven). Her previous and current work looks at embodiment, illness, deviance, selfhood, and the human-material entanglement connected to health experiences and institutions of medical care. Pinelopi’s work is informed by qualitative methodologies and arts-based research. Her PhD research, sponsored by the Dora program, deals with autopathography and graphic pathography communicating the experience of breast cancer.
