DARK ACADEMIA is a social media trend devoted to the nostalgic stylization of academic life in the humanities that may never have existed in this form. Its visual hallmark is a subdued colour palette – the hues of leatherbound books, wood-panelled libraries, ivy-covered façades of elite universities and (mostly white) tweed-clad academics. Literary examples of dark academia, such as the texts discussed in this theme issue, often explore the 'dark sides' of bookishness, learning and academic culture: violence, sexism, competition, impostor syndrome and complicity with institutional structures that shore up inequality. Dark academia thus responds to the neoliberal restructuration of higher education since the 1990s and its