This pathway focuses on cutting-edge developments in literature. It uses notions of ‘writing’ and of the ‘present’ as gateways into contemporary debates about the historical present, the nature of time, and the difficulties of periodisation. Special attention will be paid to questions of technology, innovation, and social change. Our approach to contemporary material will be genuinely interdisciplinary and we will explore how such writing plays a role in current theoretical debates, engages with contemporary philosophy, and is transformed within the context of digital culture. The pathway is delivered by a strong team of specialists in contemporary literature and culture, with particular expertise in digital cultures, technology, narrative theory and the contemporary novel. The pathway as whole thus facilitates a twin focus on the notions of writing and the present, encouraging you to examine the most urgent intellectual issues of our time that relate to the notion of ‘the contemporary’, not only in academic contexts but also in lived social experience.