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I am a Principal Lecturer in the Department and I specialise in the areas of critical medical humanities, literary and cultural disability studies and critical and cultural theory. My research considers representations of dementia and cognitive disability in contemporary literature, life writing and film. I am also interested in cultural representations of disability more generally and in the impact of new medical technologies on the ways in which we think about ourselves and others. The units I teach combine the analysis of theoretical texts with a close reading of literary and cinematic works -- I'm interested in thinking about the ways that novels and films shape our responses to a range of contemporary political and ethical dilemmas.
As a student I had some brilliant teachers whose classes made me think differently about what the study of literature was about. If it wasn't for them I probably would not have carried on to do research at postgraduate level and beyond. Critical and Cultural Theory in particular made me understand literary criticism and its possibilities in new ways and it opened up a whole new set of problems and questions for me. It provided me with a new critical and conceptual language with which to engage with the material we studied. Teaching English at degree level is not simply about enabling people to pass an exam or a piece of coursework, it is about developing skills in critical thinking and analysis that can be used in a whole range of contexts and it is about encouraging students to have the confidence to make their own judgements about texts and arguments. I still think about seminars and tutorials that I had at university and suddenly think 'oh, that's what he/she meant' -- learning and thinking are processes that don't stop at the end of a unit or a degree programme. I think that the best teachers foster a relationship to the subject that makes learning feel important, exhilarating and inclusive.
Degree level study should be challenging and demanding. You need to be prepared to think, to ask difficult questions and to share your ideas with others. Reading widely helps as does a willingness to embrace inevitable moments of confusion as an occupationational hazard.
I teach Critical and Cultural Theory at undergraduate level and a unit on bioethics and biopolitics at MA level. The units are designed around particular 'problems'. For example, my third year unit, Critical and Cultural Theory II, introduces you to a range of theoretical, literary and cinematic texts that consider the definition and limits of human life, personhood and subjectivity in the historical and cultural conjuncture of late capitalist modernity. We focus upon key concepts in contemporary critical and cultural theory such as biopower and biopolitics, bare life, surplus humanity, personhood and the post-human. We explore these concepts in relation to current political and ethical debates around emergent scientific and medical technologies (organ donation, cloning, genetic selection, medical research on human subjects, artificial intelligence) and in relation to historical events such as the femicides in Ciudad Juarez (northern Mexico) and the buying and selling of human organs. The unit asks questions about the value of some lives over others and about the material effects of particular constructions of the human. The discussion of the theoretical material is coupled with a close analysis of literary and cinematic texts that focuses on the specific contribution of these cultural texts to our understanding of these debates and on the importance of form/genre and specific stylistic techniques in mediating these debates in particular ways. I try to design my teaching in a way which enables students to develop an increasingly sophisticated understanding of a particular concept and which demands close attention to the distinctive ways in which imaginative literature and cinema shape particular kinds of responses to the 'problems' they explore.
I went to university to study English and French (which I did for two years). However, a class on literary and cultural theory made me realise that what I really wanted to do was read the work of scholars like Walter Benjamin, Raymond Williams, Alan Sinfield and Franco Moretti (amongst many, many others) so I changed my school of studies and graduated from Sussex University with a first class degree in English in the School of Cultural and Communication Studies. After graduation I spent a year living in Berlin. I put together a PhD proposal for which I was awarded British Academy funding to study at Southampton University. Here, I completed a PhD on the relationships between discourses of sexuality, culture and class in the interwar period. This research involved work on the massive Stopes archive held in the British Library and laid the foundation for my subsequent interest in the interface between the arts, humanities and sciences.
My first permanent post was a lectureship in the Department of English and American Studies at the University of Manchester. I joined the Department at MMU at the end of September 2001.
I have played a key role in the development of key cross faculty networks here at Manchester Metropolitan University particularly in relation to the value of arts-based approaches to our understanding of health, wellbeing and impairment. I work with colleagues on the New Generation Design projec and with Clive Parkinson in Arts for Health (Art School), the Centre for Spatial Inclusion (Architecture), Dementia and Neural Ageing (Bioengineering, Nursing, Health Care Science, Arts for Health and Architecture), the CritCommPsy group, Critical Disability Studies, and, Aesthetics and Creativity. I also lead the Critical Medical Humanities network funding for which has supported the development of knowledge exchange projects such as my work for Sick!Festival, the Brain Box event on Manchester Day 2016, and the Value, Creativity and Human Flourishing project. I have also contributed to Faculty projects such as Humanities in Public for which I co-convened the Human Trouble: Dis/ability strand in 2014-15. I also convened the CELL research seminar 2015-2016 which has now been integrated into our MA unit Practices. This seminar series combines papers by leading academics with the opportunity for ECRs, current and recently completed postgraduate students to present their work. In terms of managerial experience, I sit on the Departmental Management Group, the Faculty Leadership Forum and the Centre for English Language and Linguistics research group committee. I conduct research reviews, PDRs and mentor junior colleagues and I conduct peer review for the Faculty Peer Review College (and also for funding applications produced by members of other faculties). I am working closely with colleagues in RKE on the development of knowledge exchange projects with Sick!Festival. In my role as co-chair of the Disabled staff forum I also sat on DEOC with specific reference to issues of inclusion and accessibility.
I studied French at university.
Why study English? The history of English as a discipline is the history of different arguments and critical perspectives about what this 'thing' -- literature -- actually is, why it matters and how we might think about its social, ethical and political role. The fact that as a discipline it changes shape and direction has always fascinated me but fundamentally I think that literary texts (and films and TV drama etc) play an important role in shaping our perception of the world around us and our place within it. Learning to be suspicious of the uses and abuses of language and particular narrative and rhetorical devices is enormously important. Studying literature fosters an acute critical awareness and allows students to develop the ability to use language in creative and compelling ways themselves. It is also an opportunity to spend three years reading a range of texts that explore different worlds, different experiences and different problems. These are all things that carry on being relevant long after graduation.
On the undergraduate programme I currently teach Critical and Cultural Theory 2 (lat evel 6/third year). I also supervise undergraduate dissertations in the areas of Critical and Cultural Theory, Literary and Cultural Disability Studies and Critical Medical Humanities, Memory Studies and Language and Cultural Theory.
I currently lead two MA units, BODY on MA Contemporary Literature, Film and Theory and MA English Studies and PRACTICES (for all MA pathways).
I have acted as Director of Studies for a number of successfully completed PhD projects including:
Ana Miller, Under the Shadow of the Holocaust: Representing Violence and Complicity in Western modernity (AHRC funded, 2008)
Helen Pleasance (2010) The Spectral Memoir (AHRC funded, creative/critical project)
Aaron Jackson, Narrating England: Tolkien, the Twentieth Century, and English Cultural Self-Representation. (Completion, November 2015)
I have also been on the supervisory team (second or third supervisor) for eight other successfully completed projects on a range of topics
Current PhD supervision
Director of studies (DoS) Spencer Meeks (University Scholarship), Corrective Lenses: Reading the Neuro-Turn
Acting DoS/joint supervision) Andreea Ros (University Scholarship), Gothic Contagion: Reproductive Themes in Gothic Representations of Infectious Disease
(DoS) Sumaira Naseem, ‘A Critical and Cultural Analysis of the Construction of a Disabled, Female, British Pakistani Identity’
(as first supervisor) Zoe Siobhan Bibbon, The Language of Menstruation
David Cane, Representations of disability in post-war British opera
Antonio Tilli, Pragmatics in Dementia Discourse. Linguistics, paralinguistic and extra linguistic cues in the communicative strategies of persons with Vascular Dementia (VaD)
External examiner (since 2010)
2010-2013, external examiner on Keele University's MRes in Medical Humanities
PhD: Suspending Conventions: How ‘disabled aerialists’ are challenging aesthetic and methodological practices in 21st Century aerial(ism) by Katrina Carter, Royal Holloway University London 2014
PhD: Aesthetics of Autism: Contemporary Representations of Autism in Literature and Film by Hannah Tweed, University of Glasgow, 2014
PhD: An Ethnographic study of How Individuals With sensory-Perceptual Conditions influence information & Communication Technology in the Workplace by Fiona Torrance, Liverpool John Moores September 2016
M(Res) thesis (50,000 words): Challenging Ableist Perceptions of Disability and Cure Through Contemporary Cultural Narratives by Daisy Powell, Centre for Medical Humanities, University of Leeds, 2014
MPhil thesis, The Representation of Autistic Spectrum Disorder in Fictional Film and Television from 2000 to 2013 by Leigh Scott, University of Strathclyde, 2015.
My primary area of research investigates current critical, cultural and creative responses to dementia. I address this from two main perspectives. Firstly, how dementia is represented across a range of literary, filmic, televisual and auto/biographical texts, and secondly, how we might think about the role of the arts and humanities in relation to the lived experiences of dementia, ageing and the meanings of care. I am particularly interested in how we think about value in this context and what it means to try to measure and capture the value of the arts or creativity more generally. I am also interested in literary, televisual and cinematic representations of learning disability and I work closely with younger people with learning disabilities. I also teach and write on current bioethical debates around personhood, citizenship and biosociality in the age of the genome. I work closely with Dr Hannah Zeilig, a colleague at University of the Arts, London and alongside joint publications our aim is to develop an international network of Literary and Cultural Dementia Studies.
My research is intrinsically outward facing and underpinned by a commitment to working with groups of people outside academia. Over the last six years I have been involved in projects with a range of disability arts organisations and SMEs (Dash, Full Circle Arts and Disability Arts Online, Drake Music) and I am a leading academic partner on the research, development and commissioning process for Sick! Festival 2019 on the theme of inequalities. As organiser of the international conference, Present Difference: The Cultural Production of Disability, I worked with the BBC, ITV news, The British Diversity Forum, Full Circle Arts and Outside Centre (disability arts organisations) and the Cornerhouse cinema to produce an event that was open to disabled people and members of the general public. And as curator of the Manchester element of the first UK wide Disability Film Festival, I put together a programme and themed sessions which combined archival news footage, short films and animation to explore the themes of love, work and ordinariness.
My workstream (‘Now you see us’) on my current AHRC funded project, D4D: disability and community involves work with youth zones (Bolton Lads and Girls Club), a local school (Parrenthorn in Prestwich) and the New Vic Theatre in Stoke, the aim being to work together using arts-based approaches to explore questions of community, identity, equality and inclusion. D4D is shaped around stake-holder co-production and involves working with a range of organisations: ADWUK (Action on Disability and Work UK), DAO (Disability Arts Online), DadaFest, DRUK (Disability Rights UK), Graeae Theatre Company, Mencap, Stroke support groups (Bristol and Cornwall), MS Society UK, NDACA (National Disability Arts Collection and Archive) - SHAPE ARTS. I have also worked closely with the artist and film maker Liz Crow to bring her exhibition Resistance about the T4 project to the Zion Arts Centre in Hulme (February/March 2012) and I have recently published a co-produced piece with her about the use of new social media in arts-based disability activism based on an analysis of the twitter feed that was generated by her exhibition, 'Bedding Out'. My research on dementia, ageing and disability has also developed through my engagement with creative enterprises such as the Manchester based Small Things. I was a named academic partner on the Arts Council England funding application for ‘The Island’, a project that used The Tempest in the production of a new piece of theatre with residents with dementia at Shore Green in Wythenshaw. This work is discussed in a forthcoming essay with my colleague Hannah Zeilig in John Keady et al, Social Research Methods in Dementia Studies: Inclusion and Innovation (forthcoming 2017). I have also been invited to serve on the advisory board for a Scottish Film Education project on autism in film and engaging young people with a diagnosis of autism as learners, audience, film makers and actors. I curated Discovery Zone 11 (‘Brainy quotations’) for the Brain box event, Manchester Day (June 19th), and I convened the international Value, Creativity and Human Flourishing workshop here at Manchester Metropolitan University (July 27th-28th). This event that brought together academics, artists, care providers and service users in the exploration of the potential, limits and impact of the arts in relation to questions of human flourishing.
My research is intrinsically cross disciplinary in that the fields with which it engages (Disability Studies and Critical Medical Humanities) are cross disciplinary in nature. The international literary and cultural dementia network that I am working to develop encompasses scholars working in a range of specialisms including English Studies (Sally Chivers, Canada), Hispanic Studies (Raquel Medina, UK), Italian Studies (Hannah Serowska, Poland), Cultural Gerontology (Hannah Zeilig, UK), Ageing/disability studies (Katie Aubrecht, Christine Kelly, Anne McGuire, Canada); Geriatric Medicine (Michael Chapman, and Paul Komesaroff, Australia), and Bioethics (Mark Schweda, Germany). I have also collaborated with colleagues at UoM and Salford on the BrainBox project and I am currently working with colleagues in the UK on a series of workshops on Dementia and Creativity.
Here at MMU I am involved with a range of networks with colleagues: New Generation Design (Arts and Arts for Health), Centre for Spatial Inclusion (Architecture), Dementia and Neural Ageing (Bioengineering, Nursing, Health Care Science, Arts for Health and Architecture), the CritCommPsy group, Critical Disability Studies, Youth, Aesthetics and Creativity, and the Medical Humanities network. I am also a member of a number of other networks including the Northern Medical Humanities Research Network, UoM Medical Humanities Network, Medical Humanities at Queens, KCL, Glasgow and Durham universities; MICRA (UoM), Dementia research (Manchester based); CARPE (EU) and ENAS (European Network of Ageing Studies).
L. Burke (2017). Dementia and Literature. T. Maginess. In: Dementia and Literature: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Routledge, pp.88-102.
K. Ellis (2016). Disability and Social Media. In: Disability and Social Media: Global Perspectives. Routledge, pp.57-73.
L. Burke (2013). Picturing disability: beggar, freak, citizen, and other photographic rhetoric. Disability & Society. 28(8), pp.1168-1170.
L. Burke (2012). Genetics at the Scene of the Crime. Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies. 6(2), pp.193-208.
L. Burke (2009). Book Reviews. Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies. 3(2), pp.209-214.
L. Burke (2008). Introduction: Thinking about Cognitive Impairment. Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies. 2(1),
L. Burke (2008). 'The Country of My Disease': Genes and Genealogy in Alzheimer's life-writing. Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies. 2(1), pp.63-74.
L. Burke (2003). In Pursuit of an Erogamic Life: Marie Stopes and the Culture of Married Love. LW. Lewis, AL. Ardis. In: Women's Experience of Modernity, 1875-1945. JHU Press,
L. Burke, T. Crowley, A. Girvin (2000). The Routledge Language and Cultural Theory Reader. Psychology Press.
L. Burke (2013). Picturing disability: beggar, freak, citizen, and other photographic rhetoric. Disability & Society. 28(8), pp.1168-1170.
L. Burke (2012). Genetics at the Scene of the Crime. Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies. 6(2), pp.193-208.
L. Burke (2009). Book Reviews. Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies. 3(2), pp.209-214.
L. Burke (2008). Introduction: Thinking about Cognitive Impairment. Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies. 2(1),
L. Burke (2008). 'The Country of My Disease': Genes and Genealogy in Alzheimer's life-writing. Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies. 2(1), pp.63-74.
L. Burke (2020). ‘Spectres of Unproductive Life: The Aging/Disability/Dementia Complex’. In: The Aging/Disability Nexus. University of British Columbia Press,
L. Burke (2019). ‘Widmo nieproduktywnego życia: zespół starzenia się, niepełnosprawności i demencji’. In: Jeszcze raz o starości z chorobą (On Ageing and Illness, One More Time). Homini (Wydanie pierwsze, Krakow),
L. Burke, H. Zeilig (2017). Privileging the play: Creating theatre with people living with Dementia. In: Social Research Methods in Dementia Studies: Inclusion and Innovation. Routledge,
L. Burke (2017). Dementia and Literature. T. Maginess. In: Dementia and Literature: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Routledge, pp.88-102.
K. Ellis (2016). Disability and Social Media. In: Disability and Social Media: Global Perspectives. Routledge, pp.57-73.
L. Burke (2003). In Pursuit of an Erogamic Life: Marie Stopes and the Culture of Married Love. LW. Lewis, AL. Ardis. In: Women's Experience of Modernity, 1875-1945. JHU Press,
Other conference papers
'Alzheimer's Disease and its Metaphors', HEALTH, ILLNESS & REPRESENTATION, Association of Medical Humanities, Fourth Annual Conference, 4-5 September 2006, King’s College London
special panel on Medical Humanities at MLA 2007, Chicago Hyatt, 30/12/ 07
Life Writing and Intimate Publics, The 7th Biennial International Auto/Biography Association Conference at University of Sussex Monday 28 June - Thursday 1July 2010
‘Beyond Narrative?: Dementia and Storytelling at the Limits of Life', paper delivered at the ISSN conference, MMU, Saturday June 29th, 2013
'Who Cares? The meaning of Family in the Age of Alzheimer’s’, 8th International Conference on Cultural Gerontology, University of Galway, April 10-12, 2014
Invited speaker at Disability and Performativity symposium at Central School of Speech and Drama, London, 5/10/07
Invited panel member, roundtable discussion at Cultural Locations of Disability: a One-Day Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Conference at the University of Leeds, 20/02/08.
Invited participant at the Royal Association for Disability Rights symposium, Future Proofing Equality 30/11/09). I was invited to contribute to a panel on enhancing career and leadership opportunities for disabled people
Invited Panel member at Medical Humanities and Human Flourishing postgraduate conference, University
of Durham, May 16th – 17th 2013. Session on the future of the medical humanities was recorded and will be available to download from their website.
Invited Panel member, post-screening discussion of Una Vida Sin Palabras, !Vida, film festival, Cornerhouse, 2013.
Invited Panel member, post-screening discussion of Human, Home, Manchester, 25th October 2016.
After show discussion, To Belong, Lowry Theatre, Sick Festival March 18, 2017 and Guide Dogs, Rainbow Rooms Community Centre, Eccles, March 18, 2017.
Editorial board of the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies (ISSN: 1757-6466)
Reviewer for Sociology of Health and Illness (ISSN: 1467-9566)
Reviewer for Age/Culture/Humanities (ISSN: 2373-5481)
Reviewer for Journal of Canadian Studies (University of Toronto Press) Reviewer for Modernism/Modernity (ISSN: 1071-6068)
Reviewer for BMJ Medical Humanities (doi:10.1136/medhum)
Reviewer for Palgrave – cultural disability studies and medical humanities submissions.
Reviewer for Wellcome Trust, medical humanities applications.
2016: AHRC Connected Communities - Disconnection, Division and Exclusion Large Grant (1.3 million), Project title: Disability & Community: Dis/engagement, dis/enfranchisement, dis/parity and dissent a.k.a. The D4D Project. Co-Investigator.
2011, IHSSR collaborative fellowship grant: The Internet, deliberative democracy and the learning disabled citizen
2010: North West Regional Development Agency: Innovation funding for development of training materials for young disabled artists
2010: Fellowship in Academic Practice (£9000) for design and implementation of a teaching and learning project: Doing English: Mentoring in Theory and Practice
2009: English Research Institute award (£2000) for development of fully accessible website for conference Present Difference: The Cultural Production of Disability
2006-2007: Arts and Humanities Research Council Research Leave Programme, Representations of Alzheimer’s in Contemporary Literature and Lifewriting.
AHRC Connected Communities, D4D project.
Chair of steering committee of the Big Lottery Funded project, A Level Playing Field, OnSide Youth Zones.
Advisory board, Scottish Film Education project on Autism.
Outstanding Researcher/Knowledge Exchange, Manchester Metropolitan University Staff Awards, 2014.
I have reviewed grant applications to the Wellcome Trust (medical humanities) and Leverhulme.
Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies