Welcome to the personal academic website of Marinske Visser. This online space serves as a showcase of the various projects she is working on and has worked on in the past. While it is still under construction you are invited to explore the works and blogposts already uploaded.
Marinske is a young researcher currently finishing her Research Master's at the University of Groningen. Her main areas of interest are:
- Narratology
- Rural Studies
- Folklore
- Digital Humanities
- Communities
Current project(s):
Sound Soils
A collaboration between artists, locals and researchers to dive into the world of music and culture in the rural areas of the Northern Dutch provinces. Set up by the Lectorate Music in Context at the Prins Claus Conservatoire in Groningen.
Marinske has been brought on board for both her theoretical knowledge of the field as well as her autoethnographic knowledge of the Frisian countryside. Her current work involves creating a theoretical overview elucidating some of the project's core concepts: "Rural(ity)", "Village Culture", and "Liveability".
Master's Thesis
Finishing off her Research Master's degree, Marinske is researching the intermediality of traditional folk tales on the internet. Particularly, this project focuses on how the transformation and adaptation of these tales for different media and their widening (now often global) availability, and thus removal from their original culture-bound cognitive grids, affects narrative literacy.
Latest blogpost
Fairy Tales and Cognition
A while ago I wrote a literature review on the evolutionary, cognitive, and moral aspects of bedtime stories for a course called 'Art & Knowledge'. Shortly after, I read 'On Fairy Stories' by J.R.R. Tolkien and cursed myself for not finding it earlier as it would have been a perfect fit for the bibliography of 'Bedtime Stories'. This short essay will thus make up for this missed opportunity and put the two papers together in an analysis of how Tolkien's thoughts on fairy tales relate to modern theories on the evolutionary, cognitive, and moral aspects of storytelling. read more...
Highlighted work
Bedtime Stories: A Review of Storytelling and Children's Literature within Evolutionary, Cognitive and Moral Studies of Art and Narrative
An applied literature review of the evolutionary, cognitive and moral theories on the functions of narrative and the arts. Particularly focusing on the possible applications to children's literature and parental storytelling. Read more...