Rate My Professor Mike Wilson

Wilson’s research interests centre on popular and vernacular performance, storytelling and its social and policy applications, Grand-Guignol theatre, Bertolt Brecht and collaborators, and the interface between storytelling and digital technology, including internet-enabled sharing of everyday experiences. As principal investigator, he has directed projects such as ASPECT (using storytelling to reframe climate change debates with DECC), Taking the Field (oral histories of cricket communities with MCC), DRY (drought risk and you, £4.3m NERC-funded), Loneliness in the Digital Age, EMoTICON Network on empathy and trust online, and Branching Out (£2.3m UKRI-funded evaluation of urban treescapes’ social values). He was elected External Fellow of the Institute of Mental Health, University of Nottingham in 2013. Wilson’s key publications include Storytelling (Emerald, 2022), Storytelling Research Methods (Routledge, 2026, with A. Liguori and E. Underwood-Lee), Performing Grand-Guignol: Playing the Theatre of Horror (University of Exeter Press, 2016, with R.J. Hand), London’s Grand-Guignol and the Theatre of Horror (University of Exeter Press, 2007, with R.J. Hand), and Storytelling and Theatre: Contemporary Professional Storytellers and Their Art (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). His advisory roles encompass RCUK Digital Economy Programme, AHRC Digital Transformations and Connected Communities, and British Council’s Arts and Humanities Panel, influencing public policy in health, environment, and community engagement.