Allison Muri's research focuses on digital studies and the literary topographies of 18th-century London. Her current research project, the Grub Street Project, is a digital edition (in progress) of 18th-century London that maps book trades and other trades, people, events, and representations of the city in print. It uses "zoomified" 17th- and 18th-century maps of the city to visualize these relationships, mapped to an extensive database of early modern London. 

She is a member of the U of S Faculty Association Executive, and is Chief Negotiator for the USFA.

• Curriculum Vitae
• Publication archives: ResearchGate; Academia.edu

Forthcoming. Pat Rogers and Allison Muri. "John Moore and Quackery." 1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era.

Forthcoming. “Digital Humanities and Eighteenth-century Book Illustration.” In Companion to Eighteenth-Century Book Illustration, ed. Leigh G. Dillard and Christina Ionescu. Bloomsbury Visual Arts (Bloomsbury Handbooks series).

Forthcoming: “Anon., Louisa Mathews (1793).” In The Cambridge Guide to the English Novel 1660–1820, ed. April London (Cambridge University Press).

Allison Muri and Pat Rogers. "More about Moore: The Celebrated Worm Doctor and His Practice in London, 1699–1737." Notes and Queries (10 August 2023): 193–96.

Allison Muri. "Alexander Pope’s Dunciad and Ned Ward’s London Spy: Experiments in Text Visualization." Lumen 41 (2022): 205–34.

Allison Muri and Pat Rogers. "Edmund Curll and His Family." Notes and Queries (26 September 2022): 305–7. https://doi.org/10.1093/notesj/gjac105.

"Spectacle and the Chronotope of Progress in William Hogarth’s London." In Early Modern Spectatorship: Interpreting English Culture, 1500–1780. Ed. Ronald Huebert and David McNeil. McGill-Queen's University Press, 2019. 296–329.

Allison Muri, Catherine Nygren, and Benjamin Neudorf. "The Grub Street Project: A Digital Social Edition of London in the Long 18th Century." Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 31.4 (March 2016): 829–849.

"Beyond GIS: On Mapping Early Modern Narratives and the Chronotope." Digital Studies / Le champ numérique 6 (2015-2016) Beyond Accessibility: Textual Studies in the Twenty-First Century, ed. Brent Nelson and Richard Cunningham.

"Of Words and Things: Image, Page, Text, and The Rape of the Lock." In Anniversary Essays on Alexander Pope's Rape of the Lock. Ed. Donald W. Nichol. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015. 167–217.

"Twenty Years After the Death of the Book: Literature, the Humanities, and the Knowledge Economy." English Studies in Canada 38.1 (March 2012): 115–40.

“Wczesnonowożytne ludzkie MAszyny.” [“The Early Modern Human Machine.”] Autoportret 3 (38). Małopolska Culture Institute (Cracow, Poland): 25–29.

Ronald Wayne Cooley, Joel E. Salt, and Allison Muri. "Electronic Scholarly Editing in the University Classroom: an Approach to Project-based Learning." Digital Studies / Le champ numérique 3.1 (2012).

"Teaching the History and Future of the Book." Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching (SMART) 19.1 (Spring 2012): 39–74.

"Mechanics of the Human Walking Apparatus, Wilhelm Eduard Weber and Eduard  Weber." In Hidden Treasure: The National Library of Medicine. Ed. Michael Sappol. Bethesda, Maryland: National Library of Medicine; New York: Blast Books, 2012. 154–5.

"Graphs, Maps, and Digital Topographies: Visualizing The Dunciad as Heterotopia." Lumen 30 (2011): 79–98.

"Digital Natives or Digital Strangers? Teaching the Eighteenth Century Online, from Ctrl-F to Digital Editions." Digital Defoe: Studies in Defoe & His Contemporaries 2.1 (Fall 2010). Click here for the PDF.

“The Grub Street Project: Imagining Futures in Scholarly Editing." In Online Humanities Scholarship: The Shape of Things to Come. Proceedings of the Mellon Foundation Online Humanities Conference at the University of Virginia March 26-28, 2010. Ed. Jerome McGann, with Andrew Stauffer, Dana Wheeles, and Michael Pickard. Houston, TX: Rice University Press, 2010. 25–58.

“Imagining Reproduction: The Politics of Reproduction, Technology and the Woman Machine.” Journal of Medical Humanities 31.1 (March, 2010): 53–67.

“The Technology and Future of the Book: What a Digital ‘Grub Street’ Can Tell us About Communications, Commerce, and Creativity.” In Producing the Eighteenth-Century Book: Writers and Publishers in England, 1650–1800. Ed. Laura Runge and Pat Rogers. University of Delaware Press, 2009. 235–50.

The Enlightenment Cyborg: A History of Communications and Control in the Human Machine, 1660–1830. University of Toronto Press, 2007. Shortlisted for the Raymond Klibansky Prize for the best ASPP-funded English-language book in the Humanities in Canada.

“Enlightenment Cybernetics: Communications and Control in the Man-Machine.” The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 49.2 (Summer 2008): 141–63.

“Traversing the Territories: When Humanists Engage with Biotechnology and Technoscience.” Review Essay. New Media & Society 9.5. (2007): 871–79.

“Virtually Human: the Electronic Page, the Archived Body, and Human Identity.” In The Future of the Page. Ed. Peter Stoicheff and Andrew Taylor. Toronto: University of Toronto Press "Book and Print Culture" series, 2004. 231–54.

“Of Shit and the Soul: Tropes of Cybernetic Disembodiment.” Body & Society 9.3 (2003): 73–92.

“A Pilgrim’s Progress: Paul Muldoon’s ‘Immram’ as a Journey of Discovery.” The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies 21.2 (1995), 44–51. 

“Paganism and Christianity in Kavanagh’s The Great Hunger.” The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies 16.2 (1990), 66–78.


Scholarly digital projects and web design:

The Grub Street Project (in progress). Director and designer.

Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies / Société canadienne d'étude du dix-huitième siècle website (2010). Graphic and user-interface design, markup.

Imagining Reproduction in Science and History workshop archive (2007). Ed. Raymond Stephanson and Roger Pierson. Graphic and user-interface design, markup.

Hypertext of William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury (1998). Ed. Peter Stoicheff. Graphic design and user-interface design, html markup.

Anna Laetitia Aikin’s Poems (1773)  (1999). Ed. and designed by Lisa Vargo and Allison Muri. A Romantic Circles Edition. Ed. Neil Fraistat, Steven E. Jones, and Carl Stahmer.

Anna Laetitia Barbauld Website (1998). Graphic design and user-interface design, html markup.

Recent Courses

ENG 327 English Drama 1760 to 1737

ENG 817 The Function of Satire: Instability and Aggression in Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Literature

ENG 819 Mapping Topographies of Satire in 18th-Century London

ENG 340 Eighteenth-Century British Literature

ENG 307 Digital Literature & New Media

ENG 803 Topographies of 18th-Century London's Imaginary Spaces

Graduate Supervision and Research

Heather Torvi, MA thesis, "Analyzing Henry Fielding’s The Coffee-House Politician; or the Justice Caught in His Own Trap using Close and Distant Reading," August 2024

Sam Rezazadeh, MA project paper, "The Role of Social Media Platforms in Political Protests in Iran During 2009 and 2017-9 Events."

James Yeku, PhD dissertation, "Politics and Performative Agency in Nigerian Social Media," fall 2018.

Banjo Olaleye, PhD dissertation in progress, on "Ignatius Sancho’s London: The Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African."

Rodrigo Yanez, PhD dissertation in progress, on "Digital Mapping, Spatiality, and the Production of Self in James Boswell’s London Journal 1762–1763."

Federica Gianelli (co-supervisor), PhD dissertation in progress, on "Star Wars: The Old Republic: A Study on Canon in the Age of Videogame Culture."

Mari-Lou Rowley, Interdisciplinary PhD dissertation on "Technologies-R-Us: The Effects of Digital Media on Psychological and Social Developrnent, Empathy and the Brain." Mari-Lou was awarded a SSHRC to pursue her PhD in April 2013.

Banjo Olaleye, MA project paper, “Recasting Africanness: Ignatius Sancho and the Question of Identity,” fall 2016.

Rodrigo Yanez, MA project paper, "“You’re Getting to be a Habit with Me": Diegetic Music, Narrative, and Discourse in ‘Bioshock,’” fall 2015.

Benjamin Neudorf (co-supervisor), MA project paper, "Two Spectators: The Double Vision of Ned Ward’s The London Spy, fall 2014. Ben was a Research Assistant for the Grub Street Project and was awarded a SSHRC to pursue his MA in April 2013.

Catherine Nygren, Research Assistant for the Grub Street Project. Catherine was awarded a SSHRC to pursue her PhD in April 2013.

Craig Harkema, MA project paper: "A Site for Scholarly Primitives: Exploring the Digital Library Interface," March 2012. Craig is now the Digital Projects Librarian at the University of Saskatchewan.

Meshon Cantrill, MA thesis: "Who has not trembled at the Mohocks' name?": Narratives of Control and Resistance in the Press in Early Eighteenth-Century London," January 2012. Meshon was awarded a SSHRC to pursue his PhD in May 2012.

Joel Salt, MA project paper: "Terræ Incognitæ as Ego Incognita: Mapping Thomas De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater," September 2010.

Joel Stevenson, MA project paper: “To Live and Die on Tranquility Lane: The Participatory Narrative and Satire of Fallout 3," September 2010.

Jordan Jackson, MA thesis: "On Perspectives and Ergodics: Video Games as Literature" (2008-9), defended September 2009.

18th century London cultural studies digital humanities history of science & technology history of the book literature print culture

Allison Muri's research investigates the history of book and print culture and the theory and applications of digital texts and media. Her book The Enlightenment Cyborg: A History of Communications and Control in the Human Machine, 1660–1830 (Toronto UP, 2007) focuses on representations of materialism and the man-machine in 18th-century texts to discern a history of the human machine trope. This research encompasses an inquiry into the history of cyborgs or present-day representations of humans as machines in literature, cultural studies, and science and medicine. Currently, her research focuses on the literary topographies and the trades of 18th-century London: The Grub Street Project is a digital work in progress that maps these relationships, and also investigates new practices in digital scholarship.