I hold a BA(hons) First Class from the University of Warwick, an MPhil in English Literature 1880-1860 from the University of Oxford and a PhD from the University of Cambridge.
I came to MMU in 1994 and have been here ever since, having worked previously, in a part-time capacity, at the University of Cambridge. In a previous non-academic incarnation I worked in international development for OXFAM and as a playwright and director in London.
Founding Head: The Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies
in 2013 I received University approval to establish a Centre for Gothic Studies at MMU. As Centre Head, I was responsible for all aspectts of the Centre's work - specifically the promotion of Gothic studies both nationally and internationally, working across all age ranges and levels of study – from sixth form to PhD and beyond. This entails the planning and delivery of Sixth Form Gothic Study Days, creative writing workshops, Continuing Professional Development courses, academic conferences and networking events. The Centre also delivers the annual Gothic Manchester Festival and houses the postgraduate and early career academic journal Dark Arts. Further information on the work of the Centre can be found at: https://www2.mmu.ac.uk/english/gothic-studies/
Public Engagement Fellow
As MMU Public Engagement Fellow, I was responsible for the creation, design and management of Moss Side Stories, a multi-media public engagement project with a widening participation brief. I continue to work for greater institutional engagement with the local community, specifically local youth and am involved with a number of third stream initiatives to that end. These have included the Manchester Gothic Festival (2013, 2014 and 2015), a week-long programme of events across the city.
Programme Leader for English
For six years (2008-2013) I was responsible for the day to day management of the BA English programme, including the promotion of the programme at visit days and induction events, quality assurance monitoring and documentation, strategic planning, the production of student information materials relating to induction and option choice, the timetabling of teaching, the co-ordination of student extenuating circumstances claims and of the examinations process.
Over the course of the past decade there has been an explosion of interest in the Gothic as it manifests itself in a range of literary, filmic, televisual and popular cultural texts. As a research specialist in Gothic film and literature I am interested in why this should be the case and what it has to tell us about the world we inhabit. For me, film and literature opens up a window on the time and place n which the film was made or the book was written. It enables us to think more deeply about the role of mass culture in shaping how we think of ourselves and our world. And in the case of disturbing or frightening texts, it enables us to think about the ways in which traumatic events (such as acts of violence) shape our society and our selves. Most significantly, I believe, it enables us to understand the ways in which the imperatives of global economics (and the ideologies that support the status quo) are experienced and may, in turn, be challenged.
Although I lecture on the Year Three unit Modern Gothic I do not teach undergraduates.
I am Pathway leader for MA: English Studies: The Gothic and teach on the Twentieth Century Gothic and Postmillenial Gothic units. I also supervise the Dissertation component of the degree.
I am engaged in the supervision of PhDs and MA dissertations in a variety of areas - from cult cinema, film fandom and horror cinema to Gothic theology, Gothic Contagion, Neovictorian Gothic and Documentary Cinema. I have a strong interest in the global dimensions of the Gothic and have supervised PhDs on Japanese A Bomb cinema and Thai Horror. I am currently supervising a PhD on Japanese Commodity Animism and Middle Eastern Gothic.
Although I have served as external examiner for the Department of English at the University of Strathclyde and for the MLitt Gothic Imagination at the University of Stirling and have audited a number of programmes (at the Worcester and Strathclyde) I no longer undertake external duties. .
Single Author Books
Edited Collections
• Neoliberal Gothic: International Gothic of the Neoliberal Age. Ed. Linnie Blake & Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017.
• Digital Horror: Haunted Technologies, Network Panic and the Found Footage Phenomenon. Ed. Linnie Blake & Xavier Aldana Reyes. London: IB Tauris, 2016.
Chapters in Books
LJ. Blake (2017). Free Market Fantasies: Television Gothic and the Neoliberal World. University of Wales Press.
L. Blake (2016). Consumed out of the good land: The American zombie, geopolitics and the post-war world. In: American gothic culture: An Edinburgh companion. Edinburgh University press, pp.222-236.
L. Blake (2016). Return to Twin Peaks. JA. Weinstock, C. Spooner. In: Return to Twin Peaks: New Approaches to Materiality, Theory, and Genre on Television. Palgrave Macmillan US, pp.229-245.
L. Blake (2015). ‘Are We Worth Saving? You Tell Me’: Neoliberalism, Zombies and the Failure of Free Trade. Gothic Studies. 17(2), pp.26-41.
L. Blake (2015). All hell breaks loose: Supernatural, gothic neoliberalism and the American self. Horror Studies. 6(2), pp.225-238.
LJ. Blake (2015). Mark Hodder's Burton and Swinburne Trilogy: Steam Age Adventures in Neoliberal Liminalities. In: Technologies of the Gothic in Literature and Culture: Gothic Technogothics. Routledge,
L. Blake, A. Soltysik Monnet (2017). Neoliberal gothic.
L. Blake, A. Soltysik Monnet (2017). Introduction: neoliberal gothic. Manchester University Press.
LJ. Blake (2017). Free Market Fantasies: Television Gothic and the Neoliberal World. University of Wales Press.
A. Soltysik Monnet (2016). Neoliberal Gothic: International Gothic in the Neoliberal Age. LJ. Blake. Manchester University Press.
L. Blake, XA. Reyes (2015). Digital Horror: Haunted Technologies, Network Panic and the Found Footage Phenomenon. X. Aldana Reyes. London and New York: I. B. Tauris.
L. Blake (2012). The Wounds of Nations. Manchester University Press.
L. Blake The wounds of nations : horror cinema, historical trauma and national identity.
L. Blake (2015). ‘Are We Worth Saving? You Tell Me’: Neoliberalism, Zombies and the Failure of Free Trade. Gothic Studies. 17(2), pp.26-41.
L. Blake (2015). All hell breaks loose: Supernatural, gothic neoliberalism and the American self. Horror Studies. 6(2), pp.225-238.
L. Blake (2015). Book review: The American Imperial Gothic: Popular Culture, Empire, Violence. Cultural Sociology. 9(2), pp.274-276.
L. Blake (2013). The Gothic in Contemporary Literature and Popular Culture. pp.37-56.
N. McRobert, L. Blake, A. Stephanou (2012). REVIEWS. Horror Studies. 3(2), pp.305-314.
L. Blake (2009). "You guys and your cute little categories": Torchwood, the space-time rift and Cardiff's postmodern, postcolonial and (avowedly) pansexual gothic. The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies. pp.16-22.
L. Blake (2008). WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS AND THE CITY OF NEW YORK: A HAZARD OF NEW WRITING. STUDIES IN THE LITERARY IMAGINATION. 41(1), pp.1-19.
C. Blake, L. Blake (1997). Editorial introduction: Intellectuals and global culture. Angelaki - Journal of the Theoretical Humanities. 2(3), pp.5-14.
L. Blake (1997). A Jew a red a whore a bomber: Becoming emma goldman rhizomatic intellectual. Angelaki - Journal of the Theoretical Humanities. 2(3), pp.179-190.
L. Blake (2021). The Gothic Text in the Age of Neo-Liberalism, 1990 to the Present. In: The Cambridge History of the Gothic: Volume 3, Gothic in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries Volume 3: Gothic in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries. Cambridge History of the G,
L. Blake (2021). Neoliberal Gothic. In: Twenty-First-Century Gothic An Edinburgh Companion. Edinburgh Companions to the Go,
L. Blake (2020). Burning Down the House: Get Out, Signifying, and the Female Gothic’. In: Jordan Peele's Get Out Political Horror. New Suns: Race, Gender, and Se,
L. Blake (2019). The Monster in the Living Room. In: The Edinburgh Companion to Gothic and the Arts. EUP,
L. Blake (2018). Max Brooks's World War Z (2006). In: The Gothic. pp.195-202.
L. Blake (2018). Max Brooks’s world war Z (2006). In: The Gothic: A Reader. pp.195-202.
L. Blake (2017). Catastrophic events and queer northern villages: Zombie pharmacology In the Flesh. In: Neoliberal gothic: International gothic in the neoliberal age. Manchester University Press, pp.104-121.
L. Blake (2016). Consumed out of the good land: The American zombie, geopolitics and the post-war world. In: American gothic culture: An Edinburgh companion. Edinburgh University Press, pp.222-236.
L. Blake (2016). Consumed out of the good land: The American zombie, geopolitics and the post-war world. In: American gothic culture: An Edinburgh companion. Edinburgh University press, pp.222-236.
L. Blake (2016). Trapped in the Hysterical Sublime: Twin Peaks, Postmodernism, and the Neoliberal Now. In: Return to Twin Peaks. Palgrave Macmillan US, pp.229-245.
L. Blake (2016). Return to Twin Peaks. JA. Weinstock, C. Spooner. In: Return to Twin Peaks: New Approaches to Materiality, Theory, and Genre on Television. Palgrave Macmillan US, pp.229-245.
L. Blake (2015). Technologies of the Gothic in Literature and Culture. JD. Edwards. In: Technologies of the Gothic in Literature and Culture: Technogothics. Routledge, pp.167-178.
XA. Reyes (2015). The [REC] Films: Affective Possibilities and Stylistic Limitations of Found Footage Horror. X. Aldana Reyes, L. Blake. In: Digital Horror: Haunted Technologies, Network Panic and the Found Footage Phenomenon. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, pp.149-160.
LJ. Blake (2015). Mark Hodder's Burton and Swinburne Trilogy: Steam Age Adventures in Neoliberal Liminalities. In: Technologies of the Gothic in Literature and Culture: Gothic Technogothics. Routledge,
L. Blake, M. Ainslie (2015). Digital Witnessing and Trauma Testimony in Ghost Game: Cambodian Genocide, Digital Horror and the Nationalism of New Thai Cinema. In: Digital Horror: Haunted Technologies, Network Panic and the Found Footage Phenomenon. I. B. Tauris, pp.69-79.
LJ. Blake (2013). New Labour New Horrors: Recent British Horror Cinema and the New Labour Project. P. Allmer, E. Brick, D. Huxley. In: European Nightmares. Columbia University Press,
L. Blake (2013). Vampires, Mad Scientists and the Unquiet Dead: Gothic Ubiquity in Post-9/11 US Television. In: The Gothic in Contemporary Literature and Popular Culture. Routledge, pp.47-66.
LJ. Blake (2012). Vampires, Mad Scientists and the Unquiet Dead: TV Ubiquity and the Gothic’s Own Demise. JD. Edward, AS. Monnet. In: PopGoth: Gothic in Contemporary Popular Culture. Basingstoke: Routledge,
LJ. Blake (2011). I am the devil and I’m here to do the devil’s work’: Rob Zombie, George Bush and the Limits of American Freedom. A. Briefel, SJ. Miller. In: Horror after 9/11. Austen, TX: University of Texas Press,
L. Blake Another one for the fire: George A. Romero's American Theology of the Flesh.
L. Blake Jorg Buttgereits’s Nekromantiks: things to do in Germany with the dead.
L. Blake Partly truth and partly fiction: the western, the city movie and the American 1970s.
L. Blake Whoever fights monsters: serial killers, the FBI and America's last frontier.
L. Blake (2015). Neoliberal Adventures in Neo-Victorian Biopolitics Mark Hodder's Burton and Swinburne Novels. In: Technologies of the Gothic in Literature and Culture: Technogothics. Univ Surrey, ENGLAND, 8/2013. pp.166-178.
L. Blake (2008). Edgar Allan Poe in Paris: The Flaneur, the Detournement and the Gothic Spaces of the Nineteenth-Century City. In: LE GOTHIC: INFLUENCES AND APPROPRIATIONS IN EUROPE AND AMERICA. Paris, FRANCE, 2004. pp.38-49.
J. Richards, H. Darby, L. Blake (2017). Manchester Gothic Festival Co-Convenor.
As an active researcher with an international reputation I have many received invitations over the years to speak at conferences and participate in research fora. As a single parent, I was not always been able to accept. Since 2013, however, I have enthusiastically accepted such invitations, begging with my 2014 visit to visiting the Autonomous University of Madrid to speak on the work of the Centre at their Semano Gotico conference (an academic gathering that runs alongside a Gothic-themed festival).
I have been invited to keynote at several conferences, most recently the AHRC funded Global Panic, Global Cultural Production conference (April 2022) and the International Visiones de lo Fantástico conference in Torino, Italy in June 2022. My last keynote was at the International Gothic Association's 2021 conference: Gothic in a Time of Contagion.
As Head of he Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies I was a proud member of the Organising Committee for the International Gothic Association conference 2018. From 2013-2017, I was the organiser of the annual Gothic Manchester Festival conference.
I am a member of the editorial board of the international peer-reviewed journal Horror Studies and the foremost journal in its field Gothic Studies. I sit on the Advisory Board of the book series Horror Studies (University of Wales Press) and was a founder and long-term member of the Editorial Board of the prestigious journal Angelaki: A Journal of the Theoretical Humanities. I review proposals for a range of international universities and for a number of journals.
In 2008 I received an internal award of £10,000 from MMU to deliver the Moss Side Stories public engagement project.
In 2006 I received a British Academy travel award.
From 2013, as Director of the Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies I co-convened the Gothic Manchester Festival (with Xavier Aldana Reyes). This were major public engagement event that built collaborative relationships with a range of instutitions across the city (including the Manchester Art Gallery, John Rylands Library, Grimmfest Film Festival and Cornerhouse) and with the British Film Institute nationally. Full details of the Gothic Studies Centre and Festivals are available on its page: https://www2.mmu.ac.uk/english/gothic-studies/
In 2008 I was awarded an MMU Public Engagement Fellowship to enable the planning and delivery of Moss Side Stories, a multimedia exhibition project that enabled the pupils of Manchester Academy to explore their own life stories in the form of poetry, prose, painting and video art through a series of professionally facilitated workshops.
I have made a number of contributions to podcasts and radio programmes over the course of my career including, most recently for BBC Radio 4's Digital Human. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000p6fq
More significantly, the Gothic Manchester Festival garnered a considerable amount of media coverage from a range of local, national and international publications, as did the MMU's MA English Studies: The Gothic, for which I am the Pathway Leader. This coverage comprised features, news articles and interviews with myself as Centre Director: Coverage included:
The Times Higher Education Supplement (24/10/13): www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/research-cluster-explores-all-things-gothic/2008348.article and (31/10/13): www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/comment/the-poppletonian/frankly-we-dont-care/2008562.article
The Independent (21/06/2013) www.independent.co.uk/incoming/studying-great-works-with-a-gothic-flavour-8663452.html and www.independent.co.uk/student/news/rocky-horror-university-centre-for-gothic-studies-opens-in-manchester-8902149.html
Daily Mail (09/08/13): www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2387676/Manchester-Metropolitan-University-launches-course-Gothic-horror-cash-Twilights-popularity.html
Manchester Evening News (09/08/13): www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/ghostly-goings-manchester-uni-offers-5692824 and www.mmu.ac.uk/news/news-items/2194
BFI’s press launch for their Gothic strand (27/06/2013)
Chosen topic for the ‘Ambassador Spotlight’ section of Visit Manchester’s research newsletter (26/06/2013)
I am a member of the Executive Board of the international peer-reviewed journal Horror Studies and sit on the Advisory Board of Dark Arts, a journal of postgraduate and early career research in the gothic. I was a founder-member of Angelaki: A Journal of the Theoretical Humanities and sat, for some years, on its Executive.