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University of Bedfordshire
Park Square
Luton
Bedfordshire
UK, LU1 3JU

Dr Clare Walsh

Profile

Dr Clare Walsh, Senior Lecturer in English, Admissions Tutor for English, Programme Leader for the MA in Children’s Literature and Culture.

Dr Clare Walsh

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

Bedfordshire University

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