About the Author

Cristina Moreno-Almeida

E-Mail: c.morenoalmeida@qmul.ac.uk

Website: https://www.cristinamorenoalmeida.com

Dr. Cristina Moreno-Almeida is Senior Lecturer in Digital Culture and Cultural Studies at Queen Mary University of London. She is the author of Memes, Monsters, and the Digital Grotesque (Oxford University Press, 2024), a groundbreaking study that offers new insights into informal politics and monstrous aesthetics within digital media. She currently leads the ERC project “Digital Al-Andalus: Radical Perspectives Of and Through Al-Andalus (2023–2024),” which explores how digital media reshape historical narratives, identities, and the cultural imagination surrounding empire. Her research spans popular culture, including rap, memes, nationalism, resistance, and online Far-Right movements. Her earlier book, Rap Beyond Resistance: Staging Power in Contemporary Morocco (Palgrave, 2017), challenges traditional understandings of cultural resistance in Hip Hop. Dr. Moreno-Almeida also directs the MA in Digital Media and Global Cultures at Queen Mary, supporting critical engagement with global digital transformations.

Contributions by Author: Cristina Moreno-Almeida

Issue 19
postdigital
technological determinism
cyberlibertarianism
alt-right
medievalism

Of Sleeps and Cycles

Digital Disruptions and the Myth of Awakening

Robert Harris’s dystopian novel, The Second Sleep (2019), follows Father Christopher Fairfax to a remote village in England to conduct the funeral of an elderly clergyman. Initially on a simple mission, soon the young priest finds clues that suggest the deceased priest had been conducting forbidden research into the past. As the investigation evolves, Fairfax finds evidence of a lost civilization, which we discover is our current digital era.