A book a day keeps the doctor away

World Book Day Event

Are books good for you? Can they change the world?

In this event, we will explore a range of benefits of books and reading, and ask questions such as: Does literature advance the public good? Can shared reading improve personal and social wellbeing? Can literature help with depression and dementia, and does it have a role in prisons? Come along and find out more from our panel of experts.

Josie Billington, University of Liverpool
Josie works in the Institute of Psychology Health and Society at the University of Liverpool. She is also Deputy Director of the University’s Centre for Research into Reading, Literature and Society (CRILS), and is currently engaged in interdisciplinary research projects related to chronic pain, women prisoners, reading with children and families, and the psychology of reading, with colleagues in Medicine, Health and Psychological Sciences.

Jane Davis, The Reader
Jane set up the Reader Organisation, a charity and social enterprise which has the aim of engaging and enthusing people through the shared reading of great literature, to improve confidence as well as personal and social well-being.

Rick Rylance, Dean, School of Advanced Studies
Rick is the Dean of the School of Advanced Studies. His main research interests are in 19th- and 20th-century literature and the intellectual and literary history of those periods. He has a particular interest in the history of psychology and the psychology of reading.

Chair: Professor Helen Smith
Helen Smith is the Head of the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York. Helen’s book, Grossly Material Things, and edited collection, Renaissance Paratexts, have done much to shape recent debates about the presence of women as actors and agents in the literary marketplace, and the shaping effects of books on their readers during the early modern period.

Organised by Friends of the Library and Archives. 

Admission is by free ticket only. Please book below.