Dr Diletta De Cristofaro

Assistant Professor

School: Humanities and Social Sciences

I research and write about contemporary literature and culture. I am particularly interested in North American and British writings responding to twenty-first-century anxieties and crises, and in what these narratives tell us about our society, our sense of self, and of time. I am an expert in the apocalyptic imagination, especially narratives about the climate crisis. My book on the topic, The Contemporary Post-Apocalyptic Novel: Critical Temporalities and the End Times, is out with Bloomsbury. In addition to the environmental humanities, my work intervenes in the medical humanities. Between 2020 and 2024, I was the Principal Investigator on two projects exploring sleep and sleeplessness in the twenty-first century: the research project “Writing the Sleep Crisis” (funded by the Wellcome Trust and the European Commission) and the public engagement project "Understanding and Reimagining Sleep and Its Disorders" (funded by the Wellcome Trust). I am the editor of Sleep and Its Meanings: Sociocultural Investigations from Critical Sleep Studies, the first collection of essays devoted to the emerging field of critical sleep studies (The MIT Press, 2026).

My essays and criticism have appeared in publications ranging from Parallax, ASAP/J, Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, and boundary 2 online, to Salon, The Week, RTÉ, The Conversation, and Post45 Contemporaries. I am a public speaker and contribute to literary and science festivals, such as Durham Book Festival, the European Researchers Night, and the Being Human Festival.

In 2021-2022, I was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow at Politecnico di Milano (Italy), and in 2017 I was a Research Fellow at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin (USA). Between 2023 and 2025, I was the Co-Chair of the British Association for Contemporary Literary Studies, having been a member of its Executive Committee since 2018.

For up-to-date information about my work see my personal website and the website of my research project, "Writing the Sleep Crisis".

Email Diletta

Research Themes and Scholarly Interests

I’m particularly interested in North American and British writings responding to twenty-first-century anxieties and crises that range from climate breakdown and other apocalyptic threats for my first book to the sleep crisis for my second book project.

I am an expert in the contemporary apocalyptic imagination. My book on the topic, The Contemporary Post-Apocalyptic Novel: Critical Temporalities and the End Times, is out with Bloomsbury. Today, we tend to think about the apocalypse as a catastrophe of overwhelmingly dystopian consequences but, traditionally, apocalyptic narratives concern the advent of a utopian world at the end of history. My research investigates what is at stake in this shift to a dystopian apocalyptic imagination by theorising the significance of time in the contemporary post-apocalyptic novel. You can read the introduction of my book on the contemporary post-apocalyptic novel here.

I’m now working on my second single-authored book, which explores the cultural politics of the sleep crisis, namely, today’s presumed widespread sleep deprivation. This book is based on "Writing the Sleep Crisis" (2020-2024), a research project that attracted funding from the Wellcome Trust and the European Commission. As part of this project, I have edited the first collection of essays on critical sleep studies for The MIT Press, Sleep and Its Meanings: Sociocultural Investigations from Critical Sleep Studies (2026). You can read more about my research on the sleep crisis here, or you can listen to my interviews on "Sleep Is the New Sex" or on BBC Radio 4's "Free Thinking".

My research engages with the threat of climate breakdown and the Anthropocene, the current geological epoch defined by the devastating impact of human activities on the Earth system. With Daniel Cordle, I edited The Literature of the Anthropocene, a special issue of C21 Literature: Journal of 21st-Century Writing (2018).

In 2017, I was awarded a Harry Ransom Center Research Fellowship in the Humanities at the University of Texas at Austin (USA) to research the previously unexplored archival materials of the Jim Crace Papers. You can read more about this project here.

I maintain a long-standing interest in writer and artist Douglas Coupland. With Andrew Tate and Mary McCampbell, I have edited Douglas Coupland's Literature and Art: The Extreme Present, which is forthcoming with Bloomsbury.

Key Publications

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
The Contemporary Post-Apocalyptic Novel: Critical Temporalities and the End Times, De Cristofaro, D. 26 Dec 2019
Sleep and Its Meanings: Socio-Cultural Investigations from Critical Sleep Studies, De Cristofaro, D. 26 May 2026
‘How do you sleep at night knowing all this?’: Climate Breakdown, Sleep, and Extractive Capitalism in Contemporary Literature and Culture, De Cristofaro, D. 2 Oct 2024, In: Textual Practice
Quantified Sleep: Self-Tracking Technologies and the Reshaping of 21st-Century Subjectivity, De Cristofaro, D., Chiodo, S. May 2023, In: Historical Social Research
Patterns of Repetition: Colonialism, Capitalism and Climate Breakdown in Contemporary Post-Apocalyptic Fiction, De Cristofaro, D. 2021, In: Parallax
“Time, no arrow, no boomerang, but a concertina”: Cloud Atlas and the anti-apocalyptic critical temporalities of the contemporary post-apocalyptic novel: Cloud Atlas and the anti-apocalyptic critical temporalities of the contemporary post-apocalyptic novel, De Cristofaro, D. 15 Mar 2018, In: Critique - Studies in Contemporary Fiction
Critical Temporalities: Station Eleven and the Contemporary Post-Apocalyptic Novel, De Cristofaro, D. 23 Nov 2018, In: Open Library of Humanities
Sleep Mode: Phones, Achievement-Subjects, and the Sleep Crisis in Contemporary Literature, De Cristofaro, D. 1 May 2026, Telepoetics, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press
The Problem of Sleep: An Introduction to Critical Sleep Studies, De Cristofaro, D. 26 May 2026, Sleep and Its Meanings, Cambridge, US, The MIT Press
The Politics of the Archive in Nineteen Eighty-Four, De Cristofaro, D. 2020, The Cambridge Companion to Nineteen Eighty-Four, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press

Current and Recent Projects

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
Writing the Sleep Crisis: 24/7 Capitalism and Neoliberal Subjectivity, De Cristofaro, D. (Principal Investigator), Wellcome Trust, 01/09/20 - 31/08/23, £189,035.00

Professional Activity

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
Organising a conference, workshop, ...: Douglas Coupland and the Art of the Extreme Present 2021
Organising a conference, workshop, ...: Forty Winks Café, public engagement event at Being Human Festival 2020. 2020

PGR Supervision

Lucy Swift The Liminal Turn: Hauntological Limbo, Uncertain Futures and the Elongated Present in Contemporary Fiction, Art, and Culture Start Date: 20/04/2026

Qualifications