Destabilising Dickens: Kent Maps Online

https://kent-maps.online/ is a collaboration between a team at Canterbury Christ Church University and JSTOR Labs. Envisaged as both a showcase and a research tool, the site is designed to be at once scholarly and accessible. It encourages genuine interaction by inviting users to ‘find your own answers to questions you haven’t thought of yet’.

This ethos drives the growing network of links across the site. While the site does include an index and a search tool, the non-linear approach encourages creative reading by enabling users to move easily between short pieces of text without the entries feeling disjointed; there is also the option to view related material at various points. The Juncture platform designed by JSTOR Labs is used to create more inclusive ways of reading: maps and images can be set against each entry to pinpoint precise locations or illustrate key pieces of text.

The flagship article ‘Mobile Landscapes: Finding Kent Dickensian’ is a response to late-Victorian tour guides, flagging up Dickensian topography and juxtaposing the county’s most famous author with a range of less well-known figures, often through their shared association with a particular town. This strategy drives traffic to less obvious areas of the site, but also enables creative teaching strategies such as treasure hunts and writing prompts. The article follows the lead of earlier guides to ‘Dickens Land’ in destabilising the focus on Dickens himself: by positioning the reader as distractable and digressive, the multiple links introduce new contexts in which the author can be read.