Adam Kelly and Katerina Pavlidi: Dis/Trusting the Digital World in Imaginative Literature
How has the advent of digital technology impacted social and institutional trust? And how can imaginative literature help us to answer this question? Impelled by this dual inquiry, Dis/Trusting the Digital World in Imaginative Literature addresses the intersections among digital studies, literary studies, and studies of trust and distrust. Approaching the contemporary age through the longue durée of literary tradition, the volume identifies the special affordances of literature for approaching problems of dis/trust in the digital world. Chapters address topical subjects and urgent issues, including the impact of digital technologies on the (literary) public sphere, the status of the digital image and the threat of deepfakes, the emergence of cryptocurrencies and the digital economy, and the AI revolution.
The book emerged as part of the Research Ireland-funded Laureate project “Imaginative Literature and Social Trust, 1990-2025,” on which Adam was PI and Katerina was postdoc. By comparing contemporary literature from the US, Russia, Ukraine, and Ireland, this project marshalled the key strengths and methods of literary studies to reshape our understanding of social trust, with a particular focus on the new modes of distributed trust that underpin life in the global digital age. Dis/Trusting the Digital World in Imaginative Literature draws in large part on papers presented at the project’s first conference, which took place in the LexIcon Library, Dun Laoghaire, in June 2023.
Editors Adam Kelly and Katerina Pavlidi, on the right, next to keynote speakers William Davies and Ellen Rutten at the 2023 conference where many of the chapters of Dis/Trusting the Digital World in Imaginative Literature were first delivered as papers.
Dis/Trusting the Digital World in Imaginative Literature is available for purchase here
ADAM KELLY is Professor of English at University College Dublin. He is the author of two monographs, most recently New Sincerity: American Fiction in the Neoliberal Age (Stanford UP 2024). Along with Dis/Trusting the Digital World in Imaginative Literature, his editorial work includes special issues of Comparative Literature Studies, Open Library of the Humanities, and Textual Practice. His articles have appeared in journals including American Literary History, Studies in the Novel, Post45 Journal, Eire/Ireland, and Twentieth-Century Literature. He was Principal Investigator on “Imaginative Literature and Social Trust, 1990-2025,” a four-year project funded by the Research Ireland Laureate scheme.
KATERINA PAVLIDI is an independent researcher specialising in late and post-Soviet literature and culture with a focus on Russia. From 2022-2026 she was a postdoctoral fellow at University College Dublin on the “Imaginative Literature and Social Trust” project. She is the co-editor of Dis/Trusting the Digital World in Imaginative Literature and her articles have appeared in Slavic Review, Slavonic and East European Review, and in the edited volume Soviet Materialities. She is co-convener of the Soviet Temporalities Study Group which is supported by the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies (BASEES).