Dr Beryl Pong
I am an academic and researcher with interdisciplinary interests in modern and contemporary war; AI ethics; aesthetics; philosophies of space and time; and literary, sound, and visual cultures.
I am a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow hosted by the Centre for the Future of Intelligence and the Institute for Technology and Humanity at the University of Cambridge, where I lead the Centre for Drones and Culture.
I also hold affiliated positions with the Faculty of English and with Trinity College at Cambridge, and with the Department of English, Linguistics, and Theatre Studies at the National University of Singapore. Previously, I was a Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow and Lecturer at the University of Sheffield. Before that, I was a Research Fellow at Jesus College, University of Cambridge, and a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto.
In addition to my academic work, I use creative research methods and collaborate with museums, heritage, and artistic partners to tell nuanced narratives about emerging technologies.
I completed my B.A. Honours at Queen’s University (Canada), M.Sc at the University of Edinburgh, and Ph.D at the University of Cambridge.
Contact: bkmp2 [at] cam.ac.uk / b.k.pong [at] nus.edu.sg
Selected Grants and Recognitions
Principal Investigator, AHRC IAA Impact Grant, “Understanding Drone Warfare through Immersive Technologies” (2025) (£29,971)
Co-Investigator, “Museum Visitor Experience and the Responsible Use of AI to Communicate Colonial Collections,” BRAID Scoping Grant to Embed Responsible AI in Context (2024) (£161,530) (PI: J Tidy, University of Sheffield)
IWM Associate, Institute for the Public Understanding of War and Conflict, Imperial War Museum (2024 – Present)
Principal Investigator, UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship, “Droned Life: Data, Narrative, and the Aesthetics of Worldmaking” (2023-2027) (£880,574) [See project website here]
Annual University Teaching Excellence Award, National University of Singapore (2022)
British Academy Rising Star Engagement Award, “The Aesthetics of Drone Warfare” (2019-2020) (£15,000) [See project website here]
Co-Investigator, “Electronic Soundscapes”, White Rose College of Arts and Humanities (WROCAH) network (2017-2020) (3 PhD Studentships + Stipends, c. £132,993) (PI: D Clayton, University of York)
Commissioning Section Editor, Twentieth-Century and Contemporary Literature (“Modernist Geographies”), Literature Compass (2015-2021)
Scholar in Residence, Bader International Study Centre, Herstmonceux Castle (2013)
Best Graduate Paper Prize, Moving Modernisms Conference, University of Oxford (2012)
Walter L. Arnstein Prize for Best Graduate Paper Prize, Midwest Conference on British Studies, University of Toronto (2012)
Book
British Literature and Culture in Second World Wartime: For the Duration. Oxford Mid-Century Studies Series, Oxford University Press, 2020.
- Reviewed in: The Space Between Journal, Modernism/modernity, Women: A Cultural Review, The Review of English Studies, and The Modernist Review.
Edited Book
Drone Aesthetics: War, Culture, Ecology. (Co-edited with Michael Richardson) Technographies Series, Open Humanities Press, 2024.
Introductions and Edited Special Issues
“The Art of Drone Warfare.” Journal of War and Culture Studies 15.4 (2022). Contributors: Peter Burt / Drone Wars UK, Alex Adams, Matthew Voice, Sophia Brown, Madonna Kalousian, Sophie Maxwell.
“Wartime.” Modernism/modernity Print Plus 5.2 (2020). Contributors: Randall Stevenson, Adam Piette, Nasser Mufti, Kent Puckett, Jane Hu, Kate McLoughlin, Paul Saint-Amour.
Articles
“Droned Attractions.” Collateral, Collisions no. 108 (2025).
“Caring in the Mean/times.” Modernism/modernity Print Plus 8.4 (2024).
“Henry Green’s Pigeons.” Modernism/modernity Print Plus 4.3 (2019).
Book Chapters
“Time.” Elizabeth Bowen in Context, edited by Allan Hepburn. Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.
“Orwell, War, and Violence.” Oxford Handbook of George Orwell, edited by Nathan Waddell. Oxford University Press, 2025. pp. 397-411.
“‘The Zoom of a Hornet’: Virginia Woolf, Aural Biopolitics, and the Phenomenology of an Air Raid.” Literary Fiction, Disability, and the Hearing Sciences, edited by Edward Allen. Routledge, 2024. pp. 95-113.
“War and Peace.” Oxford Handbook of Virginia Woolf, edited by Anne Fernald. Oxford University Press, 2021. pp. 440-455.
“The Short Story and the ‘Little Magazine’“. The Edinburgh Companion to the Short Story in English, edited by Adrian Hunter and Paul Delaney. Edinburgh University Press, 2018. pp. 75-92.
Features and Other Writing
“Beware Blue Skies: The Psychology of Drone Warfare.” RADAR Magazine. Spring/Summer 2025.
“The Aesthetics of Drone Warfare.” British Academy Blog. 14. Sep. 2021
“How we experience pandemic time.” Oxford University Press Blog. 14 Jul. 2020.
“Excavating Ruin-Time.” Jesus College Annual Report 122 (2016): 41-43.
Reviews
Review of The View from Above in American Literature: Aerial Description, the Imaginary and the Form of Environment by David Rodriguez. Review of English Studies. (Published as advance article, March 2025)
Review of Unmanning: How Humans, Machines, and Media Perform Drone Warfare by Katherine Chandler. Society and Space (13 June 2022).
Review of Liminality and the Short Story, ed. Jochen Achilles and Ina Bergman. Journal of the Short Story in English 69 (Fall 2017): 195-8.
Gallery review of Lee Miller: A Woman’s War (Imperial War Museum, London). Modernism/modernity 23.4 (November 2016): 905-10.
‘Olivia Moaning.’ Review of Olivia Manning: A Woman at War by Deirdre David and Imperial Refugee: Olivia Manning’s Fictions of War by Eve Patten. Women: A Cultural Review 24.4 (December 2013): 371-73.
‘The Globalisation of Time.’ Review of The Cosmic Time of Empire: Modern Britain and World Literature by Adam Barrows. The Cambridge Quarterly 41.3 (September 2012): 389-95.
Creative Outputs
Dronotope: The Politics of Timelines and Data Visualisations. (With Richard Carter, Amy Gaeta, Marjory da Costa-Abreu, Joanna Tidy) Interactive Timeline and Exhibition. Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities (CRASSH), University of Cambridge. 25 March – 11 April 2025.
Beware Blue Skies. (With Joanna Tidy, Amy Gaeta, Richard Carter, Marjory da Costa-Abreu) Immersive Film Installation. Imperial War Museum, London. 7 November 2024 – 16 March 2025.
Beryl Pong 