Jon Simons and Raphael Lyne collaborate on a project focused on the subjective experience of memory. Jon researches the brain regions associated with what remembering feels like, and why they matter so much. Raphael researches the representation of remembering and its consequences in literature, especially in Shakespeare. They share a conviction, running equally in both directions, that their own investigations need the insights of other disciplines to thrive. They are developing ambitious plans to devise experiments based on propositions about the experience of memory that can be inferred from literary and historical sources, and to refine the questions and approaches in literary and historical research in the light of emerging experimental discoveries. It is still rare to find this sort of two-way exchanges, especially involving the design of experiments, and they look forward to presenting their plans.
Raphael Lyne is Professor of Renaissance Literature at the University of Cambridge. He is the writer of four books, most recently Memory and Intertextuality in Renaissance Literature (2016), and, with Cathy Shrank, the editor of The Complete Poems of Shakespeare (2017). Much of his research in the last twenty years has explored the meetings points of literary criticism and cognitive science.
Jon Simons is Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience and principal investigator in the Memory Laboratory at the Department of Psychology in the University of Cambridge. He leads a research programme seeking to understand the brain regions involved in human memory, funded by support from UKRI (BBSRC, ESRC, and MRC) and from a number of charitable organisations (Isaac Newton Trust, James S. McDonnell Foundation, Leverhulme Trust, Mental Health Research UK, Rosetrees Trust, and Wellcome Trust).
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