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Dr Francesca Benatti

Profile picture of Francesca Benatti, Senior Research Fellow in Digital Humanities, Department of English and Creative Writing

Profile summary

  • Research Staff
  • Senior Research Fellow in Digital Humanities
  • Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences
  • School of Arts & Humanities
  • English & Creative Writing
  • francesca.benatti

Web links

Professional biography

I joined The Open University in 2012 as a member of the Arts Faculty and I am now part of the School of Arts and Humanities and the English and Creative Writing Department. I hold a Laurea in Lettere Moderne from the University of Bologna, as well as an MA in Literature and Publishing and a PhD in English from the University of Galway.

My main role in the Faculty is to promote research in the Digital Humanities as the co-lead of DH_OU, the Digital Humanities Research Group (web and Twitter). I am a member of the READ-IT project, the Reading Experience Database, the History of Books and Reading Research Group, the Film and Media Research Group, the Gender and Otherness in the Humanities (GOTH) Research Centre, the European Romanticism in Association and RÊVE project and the Open Arts Archive. 

 

Research interests

Please note that there are other researchers named Francesca Benatti active in different fields; visit my ORCID for an up-to-date publication list:  ORCID iD iconorcid.org/0000-0002-1456-7812

 

My research interests range from book history to comics to hypertext to nineteenth-century Irish literature and periodicals. The Digital Humanities represent the common thread in my research. I use digital approaches to study the Humanities and investigate digital cultures, texts and hypertexts through Humanities perspectives. 

My Cambridge Element Innovations in Digital Comics (available Open Access) investigates webcomics as an innovative convergence between digital platforms and participatory cultures. As the Program Chair of the ACM Hypertext 2023 conference, I brought together computer scientists, book historians and electronic literature creators to discuss how hypertext is shaping media and communication cultures. Within the READ-IT project, I have worked with colleagues from several European countries to develop digital tools for the study of reading in Europe.

 

Teaching interests

I am the author of a unit on Electronic Literature for the A335 Literature in Transition module and of a unit on Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess' ​illustrated novel Stardust for the Level 2 module A233 Telling Stories: The Novel and Beyond. For the MA in English Literature, I have authored two units on Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South and William Gibson's Pattern Recognition. I am also the co-author of a unit on digital resources, archives and manuscripts and of a unit on researching manuscript, print and digital texts.

 

Impact and engagement

In 2023 I featured in the BBC Radio 4 programme Opening Lines on Alessandro Mazoni's The Betrothed.

In 2019-2020 I led the development of the free OpenLearn course Digital Humanities: Humanities Research in the Digital Age, which was funded by the OOC Doctoral Training Partnership and for which I wrote two sessions. 

In 2014-2019, I led the Arts and Humanities in the Digital Age (AHDA) training programme for the CHASE doctoral training partnership, which provided Digital Humanities training to over 100 students.

In 2017-18 I was the Social Media Champion for the School of Arts and Cultures, working to promote the research and teaching activities of the School through social media.

 

External collaborations

I was a Consultant Editor, responsible for web publication, for the Open Arts Journal, an Open University open-access, peer-reviewed journal, during the period 2012-2015.

 

Before joining The Open University, I worked in University College Dublin and at the University of Galway. While in UCD, I taught courses on digital humanities and collaborated with the Irish Virtual Research Library and Archive (IVRLA) on integrating digital resources and teaching.

At the University of Galway, I worked with the Thomas Moore Archive, a project of the Moore Institute, NUI Galway, of which I am joint editor with Prof Sean Ryder and Dr Justin Tonra. For the TMA I developed a digital edition of a selection of Thomas Moore’s prose writings, and designed the web interface of the project.

Research groups

NameTypeParent Unit
Book History and Bibliography Research GroupGroupFaculty of Arts

 

Externally funded projects

A question of style: individual voices and corporate identity in the Edinburgh Review and Quarterly Review
RoleStart dateEnd dateFunding source
Lead01 Jan 201731 Oct 2017RSVP The Research Society for Victorian Periodicals

In A Question of Style, we want to assess the assumption that early nineteenth-century periodicals succeeded in creating, through a “transauthorial discourse”, a unified corporate voice that hid individual authors behind an impersonal public text (Klancher 1987). The project focuses on the Edinburgh Review during the period 1814-1820 and employs methods from periodical studies, book history, computational linguistics and computational stylistics. We will utilise Natural Language Processing software and resultant statistics to create stylistic profiles of the Edinburgh Review and its main authors, and our literary and historical interpretation to generate critical knowledge out of our measurements. We will then qualitatively describe the results of this stylistic analysis and evaluate them within the context of both literary scholarship on nineteenth-century periodicals and computational linguistics scholarship. Project outputs will include REF-able journal article(s), digitised articles dataset, project seminars and blog.

Publications

On the margins and at the centre (2024)
Benatti, Francesca and Antonini, Alessio
New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia, 30(1-2) (pp. 1-7)

Experiential Observations: an Ontology Pattern-based Study on Capturing the Potential Content within Evidences of Experiences (2023-08-09)
Antonini, Alessio; Adamou, Alessandro; Suarez Figueroa, Mari Carmen and Benatti, Francesca
Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage, 16, Article 58(3)

Reading in Europe—Challenges and lessons learned from the case studies of the READ-IT project (2023-06)
Benatti, Francesca; Vignale, François; Antonini, Alessio and King, Edmund
Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 38(2) (pp. 477-481)

Understanding the phenomenology of reading through modelling (2021-01-26)
Antonini, Alessio; Suárez-Figueroa, Mari Carmen; Adamou, Alessandro; Benatti, Francesca; Vignale, François; Gravier, Guillaume and Lupi, Lucia
Semantic Web Journal, 12(2) (pp. 191-217)

Learning Digital Humanities in a Community of Practice: the DEAR model of Postgraduate Research Training (2021)
Benatti, Francesca; Gooding, Paul and Sillence, Matthew
Digital Humanities Quarterly, 15(3)

Superhero comics and the digital communications circuit: a case study of Strong Female Protagonist (2019)
Benatti, Francesca
Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 10(3) (pp. 306-319)

Smart Cities and M3: Rapid Research, Meaningful Metrics and Co-Design (2018-02)
Bell, Simon; Benatti, Francesca; Edwards, Neil R.; Laney, Robin; Morse, David R.; Piccolo, Lara and Zanetti, Oliver
Systemic Practice and Action Research, 31(1) (pp. 27-53)

English Bards and Unknown Reviewers: a Stylometric Analysis of Thomas Moore and the Christabel Review (2015-10-07)
Benatti, Francesca and Tonra, Justin
Breac: A Digital Journal of Irish Studies, October

Readers and Reading in the First World War (2015-09-30)
Towheed, Shafquat; Benatti, Francesca and King, Edmund G. C.
Yearbook of English Studies, 45 (pp. 239-261)

Postgraduate education (2010)
Benatti, Francesca
Research & Resources in a Digital Age: UCD Irish Virtual Research Library and Archive, 1(1)

Irish patriots and Scottish adventurers: the Irish Penny Journal, 1840-1841 (2009-10)
Benatti, Francesca
Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, 35(2) (pp. 36-41)

Innovations in Digital Comics: A Popular Revolution (2024)
Benatti, Francesca
Elements in Publishing and Book Culture
ISBN : 9781009319942 | Publisher : Cambridge University Press | Published : Cambridge, UK

Young Ireland and the Superannuated Bard: Rewriting Thomas Moore in The Nation (2019-08-08)
Benatti, Francesca
In: McCleave, Sarah and O'Hanlon, Triona eds. The Reputations of Thomas Moore: Poetry, Music, and Politics. Poetry and Song in the Age of Revolution (pp. 214-234)
ISBN : 9780367353407 | Publisher : Routledge | Published : New York and London

Joining the press-gang: Thomas Moore and the Edinburgh Review (2013-05-23)
Benatti, Francesca
In: Benatti, Francesca; Ryder, Sean and Tonra, Justin eds. Thomas Moore: Texts, Contexts, Hypertext. Reimagining Ireland (24)
ISBN : 978-3-0343-0900-4 | Publisher : Peter Lang | Published : Oxford

Charles Gavan Duffy (2009)
Benatti, Francesca
In: Brake, Laurel and Demoor, Marysa eds. Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism in Great Britain and Ireland (p 184)
ISBN : 978-0-7123-5039-6 | Publisher : Academia Press and British Library | Published : Gent and London

John Mitchel (2009)
Benatti, Francesca
In: Brake, Laurel and Demoor, Marysa eds. Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism in Great Britain and Ireland (pp. 419-420)
ISBN : 978-0-7123-5039-6 | Publisher : Academia Press and British Library | Published : Gent and London

Philip Dixon Hardy (2009)
Benatti, Francesca
In: Brake, Laurel and Demoor, Marysa eds. Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism in Great Britain and Ireland
ISBN : 978-0-7123-5039-6 | Publisher : Academia Press and British Library | Published : Gent and London

Samuel Lover (2009)
Benatti, Francesca
In: Brake, Laurel and Demoor, Marysa eds. Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism in Great Britain and Ireland (pp. 380-381)
ISBN : 978-0-7123-5039-6 | Publisher : Academia Press and British Library | Published : Gent and London

The Shamrock, 1866-1919? (2009)
Benatti, Francesca
In: Brake, Laurel and Demoor, Marysa eds. Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism in Great Britain and Ireland (p 569)
ISBN : 978-0-7123-5039-6 | Publisher : Academia Press and British Library | Published : Gent and London

The Ulsterman (1852-1858); later the Irishman (1858-1885) (2009)
Benatti, Francesca
In: Brake, Laurel and Demoor, Marysa eds. Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism in Great Britain and Ireland
ISBN : 978-0-7123-5039-6 | Publisher : Academia Press and British Library | Published : Gent and London

William Carleton, 1794-1869 (2009)
Benatti, Francesca
In: Brake, Laurel and Demoor, Marysa eds. Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism in Great Britain and Ireland
ISBN : 978-0-7123-5039-6 | Publisher : Academia Press and British Library | Published : Gent and London

William Curry Jnr., d.1870 (2009)
Benatti, Francesca
In: Brake, Laurel and Demoor, Marysa eds. Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism in Great Britain and Ireland
ISBN : 978-0-7123-5039-6 | Publisher : Academia Press and British Library | Published : Gent and London

Land and landscape in the Dublin Penny Journal, 1832-1833 (2008)
Benatti, Francesca
In: Hooper, Glenn and Ní Bhroiméil, Úna eds. Land and Landscape in Nineteenth-Century Ireland. Nineteenth-Century Ireland Series (pp. 13-24)
ISBN : 978-1-84682-065-6 | Publisher : Four Courts Press | Published : Dublin

HT '23: Proceedings of the 34th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media (2023-09-05)
Antonini, Alessio and Benatti, Francesca eds.
Hypertext Conference Proceedings
ISBN : 979-8-4007-0232-7 | Publisher : Association for Computing Machinery | Published : New York

Thomas Moore: Texts, Contexts, Hypertext (2013)
Benatti, Francesca; Ryder, Sean and Tonra, Justin eds.
Reimagining Ireland
ISBN : 978-3-0343-0900-4 | Publisher : Peter Lang

Conversational Media for Inclusive Access to Mental Health Interventions for Schoolchildren (2024)
Naja, Iman; Divin, Natalie; Coward, Sarah; Campbell, Siobhan; Benatti, Francesca and Antonini, Alessio
In : Proceedings of the 35th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media (HT '24) (10-13 Sep 2024, Poznań, Poland) (pp. 29-34)

@TellMeWhatUReadingbot: the Multi-modal Strategy of the READ-IT Project for Collecting Experiences of Reading (2024)
Benatti, Francesca; Towheed, Shafquat; Blackburn-Daniels, Sally and Antonini, Alessio
In : Creative Intelligence: 35th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media (HT '24) (10-13 Sep 2024, Poznan, Poland) (pp. 217-222)

Webcomics 2024: Creativity in Small Spaces [Web/Comics] (2024)
Benatti, Francesca; Berube, Linda and Priego, Ernesto
In : HT '24: Proceedings of the 35th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media (10-13 Sep 2024, Poznan, Poland) (pp. 386-387)

Web/Comics 2023: Webcomics and/as Hypertext (2023-09-05)
Benatti, Francesca; Berube, Linda and Priego, Ernesto
In : The 34th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media (4-8 Sep 2023, Rome, Italy)

Hypertext as Method: Reflections on Hypertext as Design Logic (2023-09-05)
Antonini, Alessio; Bushnell, Megan; Ohge, Christopher; Benatti, Francesca; Adamou, Alessandro and Brooker, Sam
In : The 34th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media (4-8 Sep 2023, Rome, Italy)

Missed Connections: Hypertext and Book History (2022-09)
Brooker, Sam; Antonini, Alessio; Benatti, Francesca and Ohge, Christopher
In : DH+BH: An Interdisciplinary Conference on Digital Humanities and Book History (22-24 Sep 2022, Virtual)

Cultural Challenges of DH Reflecting on DH Waves (2022-09)
Antonini, Alessio and Benatti, Francesca
In : Digital Humanities Congress 2022 (8-11 Sep 2022, Sheffield, UK)

Reading Transmedia: Re-contextualising the Written Word in Popular Web-native Genres (2022-01)
Towheed, Shafquat; Antonini, Alessio; Benatti, Francesca and Brooker, Sam
In : SHARP 2022 – Power of the Written Word (11-15 Jul 2022, Amsterdam, NL)

Reading Popular Culture Offline and Online: Outlining a Comparative Study of Reading Experiences Between Webcomics and Twenty-First Century Book Club Choices (2021-09)
Benatti, Francesca; Norrick-Rühl, Corinna and Antonini, Alessio
In : 2nd International Conference of the European Association for Digital Humanities (21-25 Sep 2021, Russia)

Death and Transmediations: Manuscripts in the Age of Hypertext (2021-07-09)
Antonini, Alessio; Benatti, Francesca; Watson, Nicola; King, Edmund and Gibson, Jonathan
In : 32nd ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media, HT 2021 (30 Aug - 2 Sep 2021, Virtual Event USA) (pp. 17-26)

Into the Macroscope: Systematic integration of micro- and macro-scale study of digital reading (2021)
Benatti, Francesca and Antonini, Alessio
In : The 17th IGEL Conference (23 Jun - 26 Jun 2021, University of Liverpool (Remote))

Restoration and Repurposing of DH legacy projects: the UK-RED case (2020-07-20)
Antonini, Alessio; Benatti, Francesca and King, Edmund
In : Digital Humanities Conference 2020 (20-24 Jul 2020, Ottawa)

On Links To Be: Exercises in Style #2 (2020-07-13)
Antonini, Alessio; Benatti, Francesca and Blackburn-Daniels, Sally
In : 31st ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media (HT’20) (13-15 Jul 2020, Online) (pp. 27-36)

Circuits, Cycles, Configurations: an Interaction Model of Web Comics (2020)
Antonini, Alessio; Brooker, Sam and Benatti, Francesca
In : The 13th International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling (3-6 Nov 2020, Bournemouth, UK)

*ing the Written Word: Digital Humanities Methods for Book History (2020)
Antonini, Alessio and Benatti, Francesca
In : SHARP 2020: Power of the Written Word (11-15 Jul 2020, Amsterdam)

Developing a Community of Practice: The CHASE Model for Digital Humanities Researcher Training (2019-07-09)
Benatti, Francesca; Gooding, Paul and Sillence, Matthew
In : Digital Humanities Conference 2019: Complexities (9-12 Jul 2019, Utrecht, the Netherlands)

Reading in Europe - Challenge and Case Studies of READ-IT Project (2019)
Vignale, François; Benatti, Francesca and Antonini, Alessio
In : Digital Humanities Conference 2019 (9-12 Jul 2019, Utrecht, Netherland)

Modelling Changes in Diaries, Correspondence and Authors’ Libraries to support research on reading: the READ-IT approach (2019)
Antonini, Alessio; Benatti, Francesca; King, Edmund; François, Vignale and Guillaume, Gravier
In : Open Data and Ontologies for Cultural Heritage (ODOCH'19) (3 - Jun -2019, Rome, Italy)

A Question of Style: corpus building and stylistic analysis of the Edinburgh Review and Quarterly Review, 1814-1820 (2018-09)
Benatti, Francesca and King, David
In : DHC (Digital Humanities Congress) 2018 (06-08 Sep 2018, University of Sheffield)

One Year After. A Question of Style: individual voices and corporate identity in the Edinburgh Review, 1814-1820 (2018-07-26)
Benatti, Francesca and King, David
In : RSVP/VSAWC 2018 The Body and the Page in Victorian Culture (26-28 Jul 2018, University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada)

A (Data) Tale Of Two Faculties (2018)
King, David and Benatti, Francesca
In : Data Conversations (26 Nov 2018, The Open University, UK)

A Question of Style: individual voices and corporate identity in the Edinburgh Review, 1814-1820 (2017-07)
Benatti, Francesca and King, David
In : 49th Annual Conference of The Research Society for Victorian Periodicals: Borders and Border Crossings (27-29 Jul 2017, University of Freiburg, Germany)

Algorithmic criticism, Distant Reading and the Edinburgh Review (2017-07)
Benatti, Francesca and King, David
In : BARS (British Association for Romantic Studies) 2017 Romantic Improvement (27-30 Jul 2017, University of York, UK)

Hidden Authors and Reading Machines: Investigating 19th-century authorship with 21st-century technologies (2017-07)
Benatti, Francesca and King, David
In : SHARP 2017: Technologies of the book (9-12 Jul 2017, University of Victoria, Canada)

A Question of Style: individual voices and corporate identity in the Edinburgh Review, 1814-1820 (2017-06)
Benatti, Francesca and King, David
In : DHSI 2017 Colloquium (6-15 Jun 2017, University of Victoria, Canada)

A Question of Style: individual voices and corporate identity in the Edinburgh Review, 1814-1820 (2016-09)
Benatti, Francesca and King, David
In : Digital Humanities Congress 2016 (8-10 Sep 2016, University of Sheffield, UK)

In Search of the Voice of the Edinburgh Review (2016-06)
Benatti, Francesca and King, David
In : Romantic Voices (22-23 Jun 2016, The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities, Oxford, UK)

The Thomas Moore Archive (2011)
Benatti, Francesca; Ryder, Sean and Tonra, Justin
Moore Institute, National University of Ireland, Galway