Katy Wareham Morris

Katy Wareham Morris smiling at camera

Senior Lecturer in Media & Film Studies; Course Leader for Media & Culture; Head of Department for English, Media and Culture

Institute of Arts and Humanities

English Media and Culture

Senior Leadership Team

Contact Details

email: k.wareham.morris@worc.ac.uk
tel: 01905 855433

Katy leads the BA Hons in Media & Film Studies, a dynamic course which responds to innovations in media forms and applications as well as contemporary cultural issues. Katy is particularly interested in how digital technologies have changed media industries and the way audiences respond to them; and, media futures including immersive media. Katy interrogates media representations created by and representing identities and cultures which have been historically marginalised and challenge the white, middle class, patriarchal tradition. Katy is a proud working class, disabled, female academic and, a published poet.

She also has industry experience having worked in the field of digital social media marketing, creating content and managing communities. She also helped to establish the UK political party, The Women’s Equality Party. Katy uses this experience to help students plan their own careers and introduces them to her professional contacts in the communications, technologies, culture and creative industries. Katy facilitates the work project modules across the department and often organises employability events. Katy also leads the MA English module in Professional Development.

Katy’s teaching is informed by her research which centres on the potential of digital spaces, including how they shape identities and communities and, writerly practice and creativity. Her poetry is experimental and explores human vulnerabilities, played out on a fragile earth. She is interested in performance, live or online as a form of artivism: art as activism. Her poetry has been published by award-winning independent presses and endorsed by some of Britain's best contemporary poets including Andrew McMillan, Helen Ivory and John McCullough. Katy regularly performs her poetry at spoken word events and festivals around the UK.

Katy is currently completing her PhD research in literary gaming, play and post-queer politics, which has both critical and creative elements.

Teaching Interests

Katy leads the mandatory Level 4 module, Digital Cultures which examines contemporary media technologies such as algorithms, NFTs and deepfakes and their relationship to identity, cultures and contemporary social/political issues. Katy also leads modules in social media, which investigates the relationship between social media and activism; and immersive media which examines cutting-edge innovations such as mixed reality apps and the Metaverse. Katy’s screen studies module focusses on the representation of marginalised or ‘othered’ identities, including women of colour, queer cultures and disability. She is particularly interested in the work of British writers, producers and directors such as Michaela Coel, Shane Meadows and Russell T. Davies.

Katy has been nominated for the Students’ Union Outstanding Lecturer Award and Outstanding innovation in Teaching Award. She is a Fellow of the HEA and has a PGCE in Post-Compulsory Education and Training. She has also published her research on gamified pedagogy and ‘escape room’ classrooms.

Research Interests

Katy’s research interests include:

  • Digital poetry
  • Social media and alternative ‘literatures’
  • Transmedia
  • Post-digital creative practice
  • Identity politics and representation, particularly gender and sexuality
  • Queer and post-queer politics
  • Video games studies, gamification and ludology (play)
  • Gamified pedagogy

Recently, Katy has published on transmedia representations of trans teens experiences and communities and, spoken word performance, live or online as a form of activism: art as activism. She is due to publish research in 2024 on DIY feminisms and digital spaces and, deepfake technologies, geopolitics and propaganda.

In May 2022, Katy’s latest poetry collection, Violet Existence was published by Award-Winning publisher, Broken Sleep Books and endorsed by John McCullough. Her other poetry publications include:

  • Making Tracks (V. Press, 2020)
  • Cutting the Green Ribbon (Hesterglock Press, 2018)
  • Inheritance (a collaboration with Ruth Stacey, Mother’s Milk books, 2017)

Katy’s PhD research examines (post)digital writerly practice and creativity and, digital poetry dispersed across multiple internet networks and platforms. She is interested in the creation of ludic-literary texts and the decoding of these through ludo-narrative analysis. This project involves the creation of a digital poetic ‘text’ with ludic-literary features. Katy is interested in how this text might catalyse affective, embodied connections between the writer and user (or collaborator) through post-queer play.

Katy is also interested in how she can apply her knowledge and understanding of gamification and play within her teaching practice, experimenting with gamified lessons. She has published on gamified pedagogy and ‘escape room style’ learning experiences.

Katy was chosen for Penguin’s WriteNow mentoring programme and is currently writing her first literary novel.

Katy is also a member of the university of Worcester research group, Contemporary Literary Cultures (CLiC).

Publications

Wareham, Morris, Katy (2022) Violet Existence. Broken Sleep Books. ISBN 9781915079220

Wareham Morris, Katy (2021) Playing for Affect in Counterpublics: An interdisciplinary Investigation into the Transformative Potential of Spoken Word Hybridity. In: Spoken Word in the UK. Routledge. ISBN 9780367352530; Hardback: 9780367352523; eBook: 9780429330223

Wareham Morris, Katy (2021) I Am Jazz (Jennings, 2013-Present)-Transmedia Autobiography and Transitioning. In: Transmedia Cultures : A Companion. Genre fiction and film companions. Peter Lang, Oxford, pp. 211-218. ISBN 978-1-78997-179-8

Wareham Morris, Katy (2020) Making Tracks. V Press. ISBN 9781838048808

Wareham Morris, Katy and McGowan, Jack (2018) Gamified Learning: a Rationale for Ludo-pedagogy and Gamified Classrooms. Worcester Journal of Learning and Teaching, 12. pp. 23-31. ISSN 2024-8032

Wareham Morris, Katy (2018) Cutting the Green Ribbon. Hesterglock Press, Bristol. ISBN 9781999915346

Wareham Morris, Katy and Stacey, Ruth (2018) R0B0TAN1CA. In: No! Robot, No! Sidekick Books. ISBN 978-1909560277

Stacey, Ruth and Wareham Morris, Katy (2017) Inheritance. Mother's Milk Books, Nottingham. ISBN 9780995451667

Forthcoming:

Fighting for E-quality: how does social media mobilise DIY feminists to political activism? In: Gender: Representation, Engagement and Expression in the digital sphere. Rowman and Littlefield International.

Deepfake Sockpuppets: the toxic ‘realities’ of a weaponized internet. In: Gothic Nostalgia. Palgrave Macmillan.