Dr Gemma Curto
Postdoctoral Fellow, August 2026 - July 2027
Dr Gemma Curto is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Liverpool and holds a PhD in English from the University of Sheffield. Her research is interdisciplinary and lies at the intersection of literature, science and technology, and the environment. In her publications she has explored representations of chaotic systems and diverging conceptions of time and environmental change in experimental narratives. Gemma is the Postgraduate and Early Career Researcher Officer for the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (UK and Ireland) and co-host of the Green Listening: Discussions in Ecocriticism podcast.
Project title: Solar Storm Narratives
Gemma’s research at the Institute focuses on nineteenth-century literary and popular responses that arose around the Carrington Event of 1859, the first solar storm documented to have severely disrupted communication infrastructures. She explores how the event gave rise to narratives of both awe and anxiety over technological vulnerability, and how these responses interacted with and shaped changing practices of scientific observation and technological mediation within an emerging imaginary of solar-terrestrial physics.