Dr Jennifer Wallace is a Harris Fellow and Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Peterhouse, University of Cambridge. She has published seven books as author or editor including The Cambridge Introduction to Tragedy (2007) and Tragedy Since 9/11: Reading a World Out of Joint (2020), as well as one work of fiction, Digging Up Milton (2015).
Wallace’s work on tragedy extends from the historical dramatic tradition to the contemporary world, focusing upon the human need for storytelling and the ethics of bearing witness. Photography has taken up an important place in these concerns. Her writing about photojournalism has resulted in various articles such as “Tragedy, Photography and Osama Bin Laden: Looking at the Enemy”, Critical Quarterly (2015) and “Tragedy, Recognition and Photography: Affective Traditions of Witnessing” in Picturing Peace: Photography, Conflict Transformation, and Peacebuilding, edited by Tom Allbeson, Pippa Oldfield and Jolyon Mitchell (2024). Together with her husband, the photographer Robert Wallis, she has reported on various stories around the globe, including in Israel/Palestine and in rural India. Their joint work in the state of Jharkhand, India, on the impact of mining and industrial development on the indigenous Adivasi, resulted in an extensive exhibition and series of seminars at the School of Oriental and African Studies [SOAS] in London.
Jennifer Wallace’s latest book project is on tragedy and climate change, provisionally entitled Fossil-Fuelled Fate: Tragic Hamartia in the Anthropocene. She writes a weekly post on Substack, “World Out of Joint”, commenting on our tumultuous times through the insights of literature, philosophy and the arts.