Ally Louks

Dr. Ally Louks is an English literary scholar and public academic known for her work on the cultural and social significance of smell, especially in modern and contemporary prose. She completed her PhD at the University of Cambridge’s Peterhouse in 2024 with the dissertation “Olfactory Ethics: The Politics of Smell in Modern and Contemporary Prose,” and is currently developing this work for a wider public through media appearances and an upcoming book on smell in pop culture.

Products they talk about

A Series of Unfortunate Events👍 Recommends
…comfort reading while working on academic thesis about dark topics
“When I was finalizing the edits on my thesis, I listened to all of the audio books for a series of Unfortunate Events, which is a series that I loved when I was a kid again. And it actually really rewards a reread because it's very intensely literary. There are lots and lots of references to canonical literature in those books.”
on Ologies with Alie Ward
Come Join Our Disease👍 Recommends
…discussing how smell is used in literature to describe everyday situations
“The coffee breath reminded me of this novel called Come Join Our Disease by Sam Byers, who writes so wonderfully about the smells associated with the commute, kind of the work commute. And the long incubated farts and dehydrated spit. And it's incredibly, just so precise, the way he's able to evoke these particular smells.”
on Ologies with Alie Ward
Pulse👍 Recommends
…discussing how smell is used to explore disability and connection in literature
“And it reminded me of this extremely recent experience that I had where one of my students submitted to me without letting me know that they were working on this, which made it even more wonderful, an essay about a short story by Julian Barnes called Pulse, which is about a man who loses his sense of smell at the same time that his wife is diagnosed with motor neuron disease.”
on Ologies with Alie Ward
The Master of Petersburg💬 Mentioned
…exploring how grief is conveyed through smell in literature
“The text that automatically comes to mind is a novel by J.M. Coetzee, who is the author of Disgrace, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature. But one of his lesser known novels is called The Master of Petersburg. And it's a kind of fictionalized account of Dostoyevsky's life. And at the beginning of the novel, we see this fictionalized Dostoyevsky enter the room of his recently deceased son. And he kind of picks up various things in the room to smell them.”
on Ologies with Alie Ward