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PROFILE

Idil Longe is a thing in the sky.

She is a researcher and practictioner interested in what it means to be young and/or black and/or a fan on the internet.

She is interested in working in the technology policy sector, and collaborating with grassroots organisations in order to insure a safe and representative future for online youth culture worldwide.

She has worked with numerous companies and educational institutions (including the University of Cambridge, Black Cultural Archives and Iniva). She is motivated to work towards the representation and safety of young people and their culture on digital platforms.

Her writing has been featured on Varsity, the Cambridge Journal of Visual Culture and Archive of Our Own.

CONTACT

ithilllonge@hotmail.com / idillonge@gmail.com
Instagram

CV (VIEW FULL CV HERE)

Education

MPhil Digital Humanities (2:1)
University of Cambridge

Ba History and Politics (1st)
Queen Mary University of London

Employment

Module Leader in AI & Bias (Aug 2026) Thinking Black | London, UK

Bookseller (2022-2026)| UK

Archival and Curatorial Intern (Jan 2025 - Sept 2025)
British Association of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons (BAPRAS)| London, UK

Library Assistant at The Stuart Hall Library (Sept 2024 - Jan 2025)
Iniva| London, UK

Young Advisor (Mar 2024 – Aug 2025)
Historic England | Remote, UK

Youth Forum Member (Sept 2023 - Jul 2024)
Black Cultural Archives | London, UK

Volunteer (Sept 2023 - Jul 2024)
Young Historians Project | Remote/London, UK

Skills

Publications

The Cambridge Journal of Visual Culture (Forthcoming, Oct 2026)
Vocal Synth: Multimodality in Online Fan Production-

Varsity Newspaper, University of Cambridge (Forthcoming, Mar 2026)
The Imperfect Art of the Vlog: Cinematic YouTube

History Matters Journal Vol. 3, No. 2 (Autumn 2023) Nov 2023
Review of “A Hidden History: African women and the British Healthcare Service, 1900-1949” - A documentary by the Young Historians Project.

Awards

Institute of Migration Studies Conference First Place graduate Prize (£250)

Cambridge Long Vacation Scholarship (£500)

IHR Scholarship (£300)

Last Updated 24.10.31

SAMPLE WRITING

The imperfect art of the vlog | Thursday April 16 2026, 9:23am

I discovered this YouTube channel in the typical way that one, in the age of algorithmic content, discovers any channel: through a bored and incessant refreshing of the homepage in order to find something new. Doomscrolling keeps internet users in a damning cycle of their own creation, but as of late, analysts and researchers alike have seen YouTube’s algorithm shift in a significant way. It has begun to prioritise recency and fast-growth over verification, a decision that commentators have defined as a cause of YouTube’s “enshittification” over the past few years. Nevertheless, this is how I also came across a YouTube video ominously titled ‘there’s a monster outside my window’. The video follows an unidentified man struggling to complete the last leg of a drive through rural America. He is tethered only to gas stations and the open road, everything else left only to his unfiltered stream of consciousness which he shares unashamedly at camera. I was instantly drawn in. The video sparkled like a diamond among a rough wall of oversaturated thumbnails, all carefully attuned to algorithmic appeal. With its plain thumbnail and striking title, I had to explore this channel for myself. What I discovered was a style of video I had not seen in a long time.

First, you are fair to ask, what is the YouTube account ‘nor gather into barns’? Referred to by a reddit user as “an indefinable art project rather than a channel focused on travelling,” the channel follows a young man, an aspiring writer, drifting between states and continents in search for greater meaning. Along the way, he discovers friends, lovers and hardships in equal measure. The videos can be seen to mix methods of poetry, dynamic videography, storylines and narratives that subtly weave together to represent the curated desires of the focaliser. It seems to be the opposite of everything one comes to expect from a YouTube video in the modern world: it lacks any oversaturated flashing lights, vacuous challenges, and hyper-exaggerated reactions. However, I believe this is also why ‘nor gather into barns’ thrives. The unorthodox structure and casual formatting harken back to one specific form of media formatting that flourishes online: The Vlog.

(Read the rest here...)

Noema Kaalachakra | Published in TTBA (Cambridge Science Fiction & Fantasy Zine) Easter, 2026

You could not hear the sound of the bullet shot out of your gun, muffled by the screaming of cicadas in your ear in this hot July season, but you saw the pink petals shake down the tree and you knew it had been done. You walked towards the body, devoid of hesitation. You lacked it still when you emptied its pockets, finding what you came for, chucking what you didn’t. Your weight shifted to your knees as you prayed lightly before plunging an unshaking finger into the eye of your victim. You struggled a little before pulling it out. It didn’t come out as clean as you would have hoped. Swallowing bile, the first moment of unease you had felt today, you wiped the artificial eye on your jacket. You continued to wipe, hard and focused, until the blue-green swirls of paint began to scratch, revealing the glint of silver chrome and a small, flashing light-

“Fuck.” You chucked the eye as far as you could towards the sky, sloppy enough not to avoid the busy street over the edge of the hill. “Fuck. Shit shit shit.” Your words blended into each other, a cacophony of profanity, as you watched the bomb detonate mid-air above the highway. A notification flashed on your watch, showing the number ticking upwards. 2 million, 3 million, 4 million more years. It had been done.

Fuck that. You swiftly turned, power-walking for your bike. Your worry for individual human life was not a factor of some retribution from your superiors- merely a pathetic sympathy. There was no real reason for you to feel bad about this. There was always, after all, a greater good. Mounting your bike, you heard the rising and falling tones of human voices, surely expressing some form of anxiety over a bomb detonating just above them. You quickly made sure to check there were no sounds of life termination or pain before you turned on your engine, racing off towards the direction of your Airbnb. Your days of skirmishing were over, and you had no further need to rack up a kill count. One body, one check- anything else was overtime to you, and your employers, strapped for cash, had no capacity for overtime pay.

It was sweltering in Tokyo. During this season, human bodies rubbed together, willingly and unwillingly, creating a frictional tension of heat that bordered between uncomfortable and downright sadistic. You were once excited to receive a summer assignment, merely favouring it due to the increased percentage of witnessing… girls in bikinis (there was no other way to put it. You were a freak), but Tokyo of 2024 (Before the heat rebirth and exponential island sinking) was only full of incredibly covered girls- girls with hats, visors, glasses, face masks, long skirts, and so forth. It reminded you of the land in which your grandmother spoke of being stationed in her youth, full of humans fully covered in the heat, as if cloth and archaic sunscreen would protect them from star cancer. Better off to just get the cancer and look hot whilst doing it.

But, you digress. It was still sweltering in Tokyo, and you were given a momentary relief as you raced through the busy shibuya/shinjuku main roads, your large balloon pants flapping in the wind, your tattered muscle tee letting air blow quite nicely under your breasts and armpits. Heads turned as you drove, probably as the brains in their skulls wondered why you wore no protective gear riding a Yamaha YZF R-6 (they probably didn’t know what that was, so just substitute that with bike). But alas, you looked human and were not, and there was much they could not comprehend, so you let them stare...

PHOTOGRAPHY