Yuri Cowan

Yuri Cowan is a Professor at the Department of Language and Literature, Faculty of Humanities, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). He holds a doctorate from the University of Toronto (2008) and joined NTNU in 2012 after a post-doctoral fellowship at Ghent University's Research Project on Authorship as Performance. His research focuses on book history, medieval material culture, and speculative fiction, with a particular emphasis on William Morris's works, Victorian print culture, and textual histories. He is currently completing a book manuscript on William Morris and Medieval Material Culture and exploring speculative fiction's portrayal of book technologies.

Dr. Cowan serves as co-editor of Book History (since 2019) and founding editor of Authorship. He also contributes to Mémoires du livre and maintains the online catalog of William Morris's library. His editorial roles include managing editorships and advisory board memberships for several journals, reflecting his commitment to open-access scholarship and digital preservation.

Research highlights include studies on Norwegian broadside ballads, Victorian periodicals, and the Aesthetic Movement. His work bridges historical analysis with contemporary speculative fiction, addressing themes like authorship, materiality, and textual recovery. Recent outreach activities include lectures on book history and science fiction’s regional variations in Cascadia and California.