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TORCH: Humour Network

This Network will run from 2025-2027.

Humour is an integral part of the human experience. After all, everyone likes a laugh. It is also more than its jokes – humour is political, cultural, and social. It depends on context and often courts controversy. It is understood to entangle power relations, value systems, and ethical boundaries.

Humour has long fascinated researchers across a wide range of disciplines. This network brings together people who are interested in the study of humour and is the first interdisciplinary group in Oxford to do so. The network explores the many different and sometimes paradoxical components of humour, which is simultaneously universal and highly context specific. Some of the key questions that guide this exploration are the following:

What makes something funny?
Is humour an emotion?
Where do academics find humour?
How does humour translate into research?

We seek to create an inclusive and interactive space for the academic discussion and creative engagement of humour. All are welcome to come and help us address its theoretical frameworks, empirical issues, and complex imaginative languages – and perhaps to laugh at bad jokes here and there on the way.

Network Leads

Katharina Friege, History Faculty
Rebecca Rowson, Faculty of Philosophy
David Taylor, Faculty of English
Kutay Onayli, Medieval and Modern Languages

For any other queries or questions, please contact mailto:humournetwork@torch.ox.ac.uk

To sign up to the mailing list, simply send a blank email to: mailto:humournetwork-subscribe@maillist.ox.ac.uk
Type: Seminar Series
Web Address: https://www.torch.ox.ac.uk/humour-network
Organising department: The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH)

Talks:

Wednesday 11 February 2025

Researching Humour: A Serious Roundtable
Date: 11 February 2026, 14:00 - 15:30
Speaker s: Professor Matthew Bevis (Oxford), Dr Zoe Walker (UCL), Nicolas Garraud (Exeter College, Oxford)
Venue: Radcliffe Observatory,
Venue Details: Seminar Room 00.063 (ground floor), Schwarzman Centre
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

Editors: Laura Spence, Belinda Clark