Visiting Fellow Talk: Alison Halsall, ‘Lewis Carroll: Early Transmedial Storyteller’
Dr Alison Halsall (York University, Toronto), 2026-27 Lewis Carroll Visiting Fellow, shared recent research carried out in Oxford on how Lewis Carroll and illustrator John Tenniel developed foundational visual storytelling techniques together, at a talk rooted in Dr Halsall's intersecting interests in visual narrative, childhood readership, and archival study.
Dr Halsall spent time in Oxford this summer as our first Lewis Carroll Visiting Fellow. The Fellowship was set up to mark the recent joint donation to Christ Church and the Bodleian Libraries by Ellen A. Michelson of the exceptionally rare 1865 Michelson Alice and the donation to Christ Church of the Jon A. Lindseth Lewis Carroll Collection.
The fellowship encourages a researcher to use Christ Church Library and the Bodleian Libraries' special collections to advance scholarship in studies relating either specifically or more broadly to Lewis Carroll and his interests. Topics might include, for example (but not exclusively), studies in children’s literature, humorous verse and literary illustration, nineteenth-century photography, histories of Oxford, its colleges, University and people, and the cultural impact of mathematics.
The talk drew a large audience of Lewis Carroll scholars, collectors, and enthusiasts and sparked an engaging Q&A session.
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