I own, therefore I am? Object biography, object personification and the personal archive

This doctoral project explores relationships between self and possessions: to what extent our childhood connections with our belongings influence how we relate to our belongings, to ourselves, and to others, as adults. The novel, Mary Rose Should Be Dead, looks at the various members of a fractured and dysfunctional extended family and how their relationships with possessions in childhood shape them both as adults and as a family. The critical essay takes an interdisciplinary view of object ownership: how we create personal archives from our belongings; object anthropomorphism and seeing inanimate objects as sentient; and when these objects become actors in their own right. The essay then looks at how the novel has been used as a suitable vessel for such an exploration and how Mary Rose Should Be Dead is an original contribution to this area of research.