Bureaucritics

Network Team


Jonathan Foster

(Stockholm University)


Dr Foster is currently doing postdoctoral research on the literary culture of British civil service periodicals, 1850–1950. He is co-founder and curator, with Alexandra Irimia, of Bureaucritics: Cultural Bureaucracy Studies Network.

His dissertation, Writing the State: Administrative Fiction in Long-Nineteenth-Century Britain (2025), explores representations of state bureaucracy in the work of Harriet Martineau, Charles Dickens, Joseph Conrad and H. G. Wells. Foster is also co-editor of Irish Writers in the Civil Service (Liverpool UP, 2026), and of bureaucracy-themed special issues of Administory and The Parish Review: Journal of Flann O’Brien Studies.


Alexandra Irimia

(University of Bonn)

Dr. Alexandra Irimia is a Humboldt Fellow with a background in comparative literature and political science. Currently, she is working at the University of Bonn on a project titled Bureaucratic Fiction: Narratives, Images, and Affects of Administration in Contemporary World Literature and Film, which has recently been featured in Die Zeit. In October 2025, she organized the international symposium Files, Forms, Fictions: Literary Lives of Bureaucracy, from Ledgers to Algorithms, which served as a launch pad for the network.

Together with Jonathan Foster and Burkhardt Wolf, she co-edited a special issue of the journal Administory on the topic of administrative cultures and their aesthetics. The newsletter Bureaucritics and an edited volume on Bureaucratic Modernism (upcoming) continue their collaboration.

Her book Figures of Radical Absence is published in Open Access (De Gruyter, 2023). Shorter pieces of her writing appear in Critical Inquiry, The Comparatist, Discourse, Scena9, Ekphrasis, and on the KWI Blog.


Nicola Bishop

An array of printed research posters pinned to a neutral fabric-covered display wall, each poster designed with clean grids, muted color blocks, and small abstract diagrams suggesting bureaucratic processes and literary structures. Fine pushpins cast tiny shadows on the textured surface. A slim metal ledge below holds a few neatly stacked monochrome brochures. The scene is lit by soft gallery-style track lighting from above, creating gentle pools of light and subtle gradients across the posters while leaving the edges in soft shadow. Photographic realism from a straight-on, eye-level perspective with sharp focus throughout. The mood is quiet, thoughtful, and curatorial, ideal for showcasing events and collaborations in a refined research network.




Daniel Jenkin-Smith

A minimalist conference table in a quiet institutional reading room, bearing only a few carefully arranged objects: a pale linen-covered notebook, a fountain pen resting diagonally, and a small stack of ivory index cards stamped with minimalist bureaucratic symbols. The table is a muted charcoal with a soft matte finish, surrounded by blurred suggestions of shelving and filing cabinets. Soft overhead lighting and indirect daylight create subtle, overlapping shadows and elegant tonal gradients. Photographic realism with a slightly elevated angle and balanced, asymmetrical composition. The atmosphere is restrained, intellectual, and orderly, evoking a sophisticated research network preparing for a seminar on paperwork, archives, and administrative aesthetics.




Alexandra Müller

A close-up of a vintage steel filing cabinet in muted sage green, one drawer partially open to reveal carefully arranged manila folders with typed labels referencing art, literature, and policy. On top of the cabinet sits a slim, matte-black notebook and a small, geometric concrete paperweight. The background shows a blurred hint of a modern bookshelf with a few neutral-toned books and a minimalist abstract print. Side lighting from an unseen window creates soft highlights along the cabinet’s edges and gentle shadows between the folders. Photographic realism with a slightly low angle and shallow depth of field. The atmosphere feels archival yet contemporary, subtly elegant, capturing bureaucracy as an aesthetic research object.





An array of printed research posters pinned to a neutral fabric-covered display wall, each poster designed with clean grids, muted color blocks, and small abstract diagrams suggesting bureaucratic processes and literary structures. Fine pushpins cast tiny shadows on the textured surface. A slim metal ledge below holds a few neatly stacked monochrome brochures. The scene is lit by soft gallery-style track lighting from above, creating gentle pools of light and subtle gradients across the posters while leaving the edges in soft shadow. Photographic realism from a straight-on, eye-level perspective with sharp focus throughout. The mood is quiet, thoughtful, and curatorial, ideal for showcasing events and collaborations in a refined research network.