Dr. Ally/Allie Louks

When I was applying for university, I was really stuck about whether to apply for philosophy or English.

And I've always had kind of one foot in each discipline, kind of melded the two by working on ethics in literature.

Yeah.

I could look into philosophy if I wanted to, or critical and cultural theory and history.

And that's something that I love about English literature is that it allows you to amalgamate a lot of different things, which is great.

And I love stories.

They kind of give meaning to my life.

So I couldn't possibly give that up.

And I feel very privileged that I've managed to spend a

pretty much a decade making stories my life's work.

Yes, but I had to become interested in smell before I could notice it.

So I became interested in smell in the second year of my undergraduate degree because I took a creative writing module where we had to create a poetry collection around a particular theme.

And I chose the theme of perfume because I'd become really interested in

the conceptual qualities of perfume advertisements.

How, you know, when you would watch a television advert for a perfume, it never seemed to mention the smell of the perfume.

That's so true.

It would always kind of try and sell you like a lifestyle or a feeling.

And I started looking at like advertisement copy on websites that sold perfume like Diptyque, for instance.

And the authors of those advertisements would have to contend with this linguistic restriction surrounding smell.

Like we don't have a particularly developed olfactory vocabulary in English.