Profile
Dr Clare
Walsh, Senior Lecturer in English, Admissions Tutor for English, Programme
Leader for the MA in Children’s Literature and Culture.
I was educated at St Louise’s Comprehensive
College, Belfast, then at St Andrew’s University in Scotland where I completed
an MA (Joint Honours) in English and Medieval History. Thereafter, I went on to
undertake an MA in General Linguistics (University of Manchester), an MPhil in
Discourse Analysis (University of Birmingham) and a PhD (Sheffield Hallam University)
on the subject of ‘Gender, Discourse and the Public Sphere’.
My first teaching appointment was to Bedford
College of Higher Education in 1988 and then to De Montfort University Bedford
in 1994. The subsequent merger between Bedford and Luton has led to the
transfer of my employment to the University of Bedfordshire.
Teaching role
I teach on a range of undergraduate units in both
language and literature to students in all three years of the English Studies
degree. These include language courses in the first and second years and
culturally-oriented units on Women and Culture and Children’s Fiction in the
final year. Since 2001, I have also led and taught a successful
interdisciplinary MA programme in Children’s Literature and Culture. I have supervised to completion, and continue
to supervise, a number of MPhil/PhD students.
I was awarded the Vice Chancellor’s Distinguished
Teaching Award in 2006, something of which I am particularly proud since it was
voted on by students.
Research
interests
My doctoral research and early publications were in
the field of language and gender, with a particular focus on women’s
involvement in previously male-dominated institutions in the public sphere. In
addition, and to complement my teaching on the MA in Children’s Literature and
Culture, I have published on contemporary young adult and crossover writers,
such as Philip Pullman, Melvin Burgess and Mark Haddon.
I am currently working on a proposed book on class
in children’s and young adult fiction.
Recent research outputs
Publications
- ‘Gender and Discourse: Language and Power in Politics, the
Church and Organisations, Addison, Wesley and Longman, Real
Language Series, London, 2001, 200-220 pp.
- ‘From capping to intercision: metaphors of mind control in the
young adult fiction of John Christopher and Philip Pullman’, Language
and Literature, Vol. 12, No. 2, 2003, pp. 233-351.
- ‘Gender and the Genre of the Broadcast Political Interview’, in J.
Baxter ed. Speaking Out: The Female Voice in Public Contexts,
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, pp. 121-138.
- ‘Schema Poetics and Crossover Fiction’, in M. Lambrou & P.
Stockwell eds. Contemporary Stylistics, London: Continuum, 2007,
pp. 162-181.
Conference papers
- ‘The
wrong kind of media capital? Media representation of women in mainstream and
devolved politics in Britain’, delivered at the XXI Conference of the Poetics
and Linguistics Association at Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem
Bölcsészettudományi Kar, Budapest, 12th ~ 15th April,
2001.
- ‘Gender
and the genre of the broadcast political interview’, delivered at the Broadcast
Talk Seminar, entitled ‘Old Media/New Media’, at Strathclyde University, 18th
~ 20th September 2001.
- ‘Gender
and the genre of the broadcast interview, with reference to Radio 4’s Today
programme’, delivered at the 2nd International Gender and
Language Association Conference, at Lancaster University, 12th
~ 14th April 2002.
- ‘Beyond
dominance and difference: a third way for research on language and
gender?’, delivered at a one-day symposium entitled ‘The Gender of
Language’, at Lund University, Sweden, 26th April 2002.
- ‘Troubling the
boundary between fiction for adults and children: a study of the dystopian
fantasy of contemporary British writer Melvin Burgess’, delivered at the XXIII
Conference of the Poetics and Linguistics Association at Boaziçi University,
Istanbul, 23rd ~ 26th June 2003.
- ‘Punitive
Fictions? Representations of gender
in the young adult fiction of Melvin Burgess’, delivered at the 10th
Annual NCRL/British IBBY Children’s Literature Annual Conference, at
Surrey University, Roehampton, 15th November 2003.
- ‘The
Poetics of children’s and young adult fiction: problems and prospects’,
delivered at the XXIV Conference of the Poetics and Linguistics
Association, at New York University, New York, 26th ~ 28th
July 2004.
- ‘The
feminist mystique: why “feminism” has become a dirty word’, delivered at a
one-day conference entitled The Point of Feminism at the University of
Reading, 12 September 2008.
- ‘Re-visioning
Kipling’s Kim for a multicultural audience: a study of John Howard
Davies’ 1984 film Kim’, delivered at The Irish Society for the
Study of Children’s Literature
Conference: ‘Sound Image Text’ at Trinity College Dublin, 5-6
March 2010.
Conferences organised
One-day Hockliffe Conference on the History of Books
for Children and Young Adults, held at the University of Bedfordshire, 16 June
2009.
Service to
the academic/professional community
I acted as external examiner for the undergraduate
programme in English Language and Literature at Doncaster College from 2003 to
2005. I am currently the external examiner for the BA in English Language at
the University of Huddersfield and for the MA in Linguistics at the University
of Northampton.
I am a member of the Poetics and Linguistics
Association and was awarded the 1998 PALA prize for an article that appeared in
the journal Language and Literature.
I regularly review books and journal articles in
the fields of both literature and language.
Contact Details
E: clare.walsh@beds.ac.uk
T: 01234 793091
