Current PhD Students

Elise Bikker

Thesis Title:

Mind over Matter: The Body Machine in Fiction of the long Nineteenth Century

Supervisors:

Professor Geoffrey Wall and Dr Mary Fairclough

Description:

Elise’s doctoral thesis focuses on the fictional representation of the autonomous body machine in the long nineteenth century. The autonomous body machine denominates a mechanical device that either in form or function, either fully or in part, is self-governed and replicates a human being. The project explores how the body machine is represented in fiction, which generations of body machines can be differentiated and how their meaning changes over the course of the long nineteenth century. The project explores the work of E.T.A. Hoffmann, Edgar Allan Poe, Samuel Butler and Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam and examines how these texts are embedded in their various cultural histories.

Elise’s wider research interests include: literature and culture of the long nineteenth century, the history of automata, machine intelligence, gothic art and literature.

She holds an MA in History of Art from Leiden University and an MA in Modern and Contemporary Literature and Culture from the University of York. She wrote a piece for the November 2019 issue of VOX the Student Journal of Politics, Economics and Philosophy on what it means to lose a game to a machine. https://issuu.com/voxjournal/docs/vox-2018-autumn-issue/27

Elise is also a bronze sculptor. In her artistic work she also explores the boundaries between the organic and the mechanical. www.elisebikker.co.uk