The School of Humanities and Social Science: Professorial Appointment(s) English

Faculty of Media, Arts and Social Science

The School of Humanities and Social Science: Professorial Appointment(s) English

Professorial pay range: £57766 - £93695

Closing date for applications is 30th April 2012

Appointment of Professor in English
Liverpool John Moores University is seeking to make a professorial appointment in English. It will consider applications for both full-time and fractional appointments. We are particularly interested in specialism’s in one of the following areas -  literature and cultural history 1580-1800; literature and cultural history 1800-1930, especially working-class cultures; creative writing (in particular fiction and screen-writing) – but welcome applications from those whose research coheres more generally with the research and teaching profile of our Unit of Assessment.

The Research Centre for Literature and Cultural History
Research in English at LJMU is focused through The Research Centre for Literature and Cultural History, established in 1998. This provides a scholarly community, hosting regular seminars and lectures and offering a platform for dissemination of research.  From its origins in a commitment to innovative interdisciplinary research, two main areas of focus have emerged in the work of the Centre: the role of writing in contesting social formations; and foundations of the contemporary moment. The relationship between political, national, regional and gendered textualities has been a consistent concern: whether uncovering neglected texts and lives, relocating established writers in new political and literary contexts, or historicising specific cultural practices, our work addresses questions of social exclusion and inclusion.  A second area of strength is in the contemporary: here, interest in the formation of our current cultural moment has led us to examine the ways in which we inhabit and interact with the world around us.

We are involved in two major collaborative research projects: the initiative to develop a Digital Archive of Working-Class Writing extends our engagement with acts of retrieval and the lives of ordinary people, past and present. It is managed by a steering group of staff from LJMU, Brunel, De Montfort, Manchester, and Reading.  Prescot Renaissance, a community-focused project commemorating and investigating the Elizabethan theatre situated in Prescot, Merseyside, demonstrates our engagement with regionality and cultural regeneration. For further details, see the Background at the end of this document.    

The Research Centre organises regular series of research seminars, hosts conferences, invites distinguished overseas intellectuals to act as Visiting Professors and creates a forum in which the meaning, purposes and practicalities of interdisciplinary research can be debated.

For details of staff research interests, seminars and events see our website:
 http://www.ljmu.ac.uk/HSS/119808.htm )

Research Profile in English:
English at LJMU has received HEFCE QR-funding from the last three research assessment exercises. In the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise English had 30% of its work rated as internationally excellent or world-leading; in 2001 it was awarded a 4 rating.  In the 2010 HEFCE REF Impact Pilot Study its overall impact was rated at 3* and individual case studies at 2*. Members of the department have gained AHRC research leave awards on a regular basis; they have also enjoyed success in British Academy awards and grants. Five staff have also had success with internal competition for HEFCE Promising Researcher awards, winning an award in each round of the competition. Members of the department are actively involved in external examining at a number of institutions, act as journal editors and serve as readers and consultants for a wide range of boards, committees, journals and publishers.

English
In English there are, at present, fourteen permanent members of academic staff and a number of part-time staff teaching over 600 undergraduate students and 15 postgraduates.  The Department has five English undergraduate degree programmes (BA Hons English; BA Hons English and Media and Cultural Studies; BA Hons English and Creative Writing; BA Hons Drama and English; and BA Hons History and English.)

The undergraduate programmes in English have been recognised as demonstrating an outstanding degree of commitment to intellectual engagement and innovation in all parts of the curriculum.  This curriculum covers all periods from the late-sixteenth century to the present and comprises theme- and issue-based modules involving the study of literary and non-literary texts and their contexts.  For further details of its portfolio of modules see: The department has had consistently strong NSS results, and averages 91-92% overall satisfaction. The English programme underwent a full review in 2010-11. For further details of its most recent portfolio of modules see below. 

We run a Research Masters programme, run within the faculty framework and supported by fee bursaries.  In addition to our MRes programme, we have a number of doctoral students working in the fields of seventeenth-century, nineteenth-century and contemporary British and American writing, with a strong emphasis on cultural history. These students attend and contribute to our regular research seminars.

English at LJMU has a strong identity and ethos and is committed to participative and collaborative work.

Creative Writing
The Creative Writing department at LJMU was the first single honours course of its type in the country and has long been a pioneer in curriculum design and delivery. It has seven staff, all published and/or performed and has over 300 students on it various courses: BA Hons Creative Writing; BA Hons English and Creative Writing; BA Hons Drama and Creative Writing; BA Hons Creative Writing and Film Studies.

The undergraduate programmes in Creative Writing have an overall satisfaction rating of 93% and a unique feature of the course is the way in which it feeds from and contributes to the cultural life beyond the university. This manifests itself outside the curriculum, but also within, as seen in the NAWE recognised Writer at Work module.

An example in the way in which the Creative Writing department reaches out into the community is the work it accomplished through Free To Write, a project funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation and collaborating with HMP Liverpool, Merseyside Probation Services and Liverpool City Libraries. Free To Write used creative and life writing as a means of addressing recidivism and was hosted by six different inmate and ex-offender institutions in the region, producing magazines and performances, and culminating in an imminent publication, Free To Write, Headland Press.

English at LJMU is primarily located within The School of Humanities and Social Science (http://www.ljmu.ac.uk/HSS/index.htm)  but also has strong links with Liverpool Screen School  (http://www.ljmu.ac.uk/lss/), as a number of students on joint honours programmes work across both Schools. We also share a number of research interests with staff in both areas. Creative Writing is located within Liverpool Screen School but again works closely with staff in English and with the Research centre for Literature and Cultural History.

Both Schools are located within:

The Faculty of Arts, Professional and Social Studies

http://www.ljmu.ac.uk/APS/index.htm

The Faculty of Arts, Professional and Social Studies was created in 2011.   The Faculty consists of five Schools:

• The Liverpool School of Art and Design
• The Liverpool Screen School
• The School of Humanities and Social Science
• The Liverpool Business School
• The School of Law

In total there are currently some 7,500 fte students in the faculty. There are significant synergies within and between the Schools across programmes with interests in cross- and inter-disciplinarity.  The Faculty enjoys excellent relations with the local media, arts and cultural organisations and the local business community; it collaborates with a range of external partners on research and enterprise projects.  Examples of recent developments at Masters level are a MA in Cultural Leadership in partnership with Liverpool’s arts and cultural organisations and industries; MRes programmes in Modern History and Critical Social Science.  The Faculty has collaborative partnerships with the BBC, Tate Liverpool, Liverpool Biennial, FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology), Merseyside Police and many local and regional organisations and companies relevant to its programmes.

The Faculty is currently undergoing a major accommodation review and this has resulted in a new purpose-built building for the Liverpool School of Art and Design opened in 2009 (see: http://www.ljmu.ac.uk/ada/ ), to be followed by adjacent developments for the Liverpool Screen School, the Liverpool Business School and the School of Law which will be housed in the new Redmonds Building in the summer of 2012 (see: http://www.ljmu.ac.uk/PRS/94589.htm ) The Aldham Robarts Learning Resource Centre services the Faculty, offering dedicated library and information technology support to students and staff.

Liverpool John Moores University

Liverpool John Moores University is a forward-looking, modern University which aims to promote a creative and innovative culture.  Our mission is:

"…. to serve and enrich our students, clients and communities by providing opportunities for advancement through education, training, research and the transfer of knowledge"

More information can be found at the following web-pages: 
http://www.ljmu.ac.uk

The appointment process

The deadline for applications is 30th April 2012

The final selection procedure will entail a presentation to a representative group of staff from English, School Management Teams and  the Research Office. It will also include an assessment exercise, psychometrics and a formal interview. Precise dates will be confirmed for short-listed candidates together with details regarding the presentation and assessment exercise at least two weeks before interviews.

Candidates who which to discuss the position informally may contact the Chair of the Research Centre: Professor Glenda Norquay: G.Norquay@ljmu.ac.uk; telephone: 0151 231 5013.

Background: Current projects:

Prescot Renaissance: Prescot Renaissance brings together two projects centred in the town of Prescot in the Merseyside borough of Knowsley.  English at LJMU is crucially involved in both project strands.

Shakespeare North
This project aims:

• To  create a reproduction early-modern theatre in Prescot to commemorate the existence of the only free-standing Elizabethan theatre outside London that existed in Prescot in the 1590s, and to celebrate the possible connections between Shakespeare and the earls of Derby based in Knowsley and Lathom.
• To establish an international postgraduate college in Prescot teaching Shakespearean theatre technique (validated by LJMU)
• Through these, and the activities connected with them, to contribute to the regeneration of Prescot and Knowsley.   The theatre and college will establish Prescot and the borough as a student-centre, a visitor centre, an international festival site linked to the RSC at Stratford-upon-Avon and Shakespeare's Globe in London, and a cultural hub.  All of this, in turn, will stimulate economic, educational and cultural growth and regeneration. (Main partners/agents/stakeholders in the project: Shakespeare North Trust; KMBC; LJMU; Helm Architecture

Prescot Townscape Heritage Initiative
This project is in receipt of £1.9m funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund to:

• Conserve and restore five buildings of historic importance in Prescot.
• Generate activities relating to these buildings and populate them in order to make the buildings sustainable in the future.
• Revitalise the culture of Prescot in relation to its heritage in order to stimulate future economic, educational and social growth
• Create a sense of community ownership of both the project and the town's heritage and culture
• Provide educational and skills-acquisition opportunities in relation to the conservation and heritage project. Main partners/agents/stakeholders:Project managers; KMBC; 'The Shop' community group; LJMU

Members of English at LJMU are involved in the development of this project and in brokering its interaction with the Shakespeare North project.  LJMU students are undertaking work-placements in Prescot relating to the project, researching the cultural history of buildings, leading community consultations, recording the progress of the project itself, and producing plays, autobiographical writings, poems, and visual projection materials.

Archive of Working-Class Writing (AWW)
The Archive of Working-Class Writing (AWW) is a collaboration between scholars from five UK universities (Brunel, De Montfort, Liverpool John Moores [LJMU], Manchester, Reading) to create an online archive of, and portal to, British working-class writing since c.1700 (of all genres, including autobiography, poetry, prose fiction, journalism, pamphlets & polemics). This will be the first online archive devoted to the full range of working-class writing in its historical, geographical and critical contexts.

Developed and funded by LJMU, the digital Archive will offer public access to a wide range of working-class writing scanned from archival manuscripts, rare print material, out-of-copyright published works and out-of-print publications. The texts (OCRed or transcribed where possible, otherwise in pdf format) will have associated bibliographical, authorial & other metadata and will allow for full-text and keyword searches.

The Archive will also provide a range of electronic scholarly resources for research and teaching, including bibliographies, critical introductions and commentary as well as links to related scholarly and community project websites.
AWW is developing collaborations with partners from other higher education institutions, libraries and archives, commercial and community publishers of working-class writing, and community writing groups. The partnership with the Burnett Collection of Working-class Autobiographies, Brunel University, UK, is the first of these.

Digital humanities methodologies will be used to prepare and digitise texts for presentation and searching online. In the initial stages, this will involve scanning texts and converting them to a digital format using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software; they will then be converted according to the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) guidelines to facilitate more accurate full-text searches. Manuscript materials unsuitable for OCR will be scanned as pdf files, and (where resources allow) transcribed in order to preserve accuracy and make them fully searchable. The final presentation of texts will be a combination of facsimile page images and transcriptions.

Background: The English Programme at LJMU

The English degree at John Moores offers students a wide-ranging education in British and American literature and culture from the early modern period to the present, as well as the opportunity to specialise in certain fields, such as gender, race, nationhood, and contemporary popular culture. Students progress through the three levels as follows:

At Level 4 four core modules prepare students for the degree by introducing disciplinary knowledge and skills through the study of traditions, genres and periods. All our students take a module in ‘Reading English’, an introduction to the discipline at undergraduate level and a ‘Tutorial Module’, which focuses on the 1950s and 60s and introduces methodological issues in the study of literature and cultural history while also offering pastoral support.  Single Honours students also take ‘American Classics’, which engages with American literature and ideas of canon formation and ‘World Time and Text’ which addresses intertextuality and global contexts.

At Level 5 students take two core modules: ‘Theoretical and Critical Perspectives’ which provides the underpinning to further explorations of periods and cultural formations, and a ‘Work-based Learning’ module for which a number of opportunities in British and American workplaces are available.  They then take three others from a range of modules which introduce themes, such as ‘Relating Gender’ or periods, such as ‘Romanticism and the Real: Politics and Culture in the Nineteenth Century’ or ‘Modernism Now’. Others address specific themes or writers: ‘Shakespeare’; ‘Prison Voices’; ‘Literature and Madness’; ‘Cultures of Childhood’.

In the final year students are encouraged to develop their own interests and work more independently, while encountering the research specialisms of staff in the department. At Level 6 students have the opportunity to write a Dissertation. They are also presented with a wide choice of more specialist modules which includes: ‘Representing Masculinities’; ‘Adolescence and Writing’; ‘Evil in America’; ‘Stage Worlds: Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama’; ‘Our House: Representing Domestic Space in Contemporary Culture’; ‘Post-Millennial British Fiction’; ‘Vamps and Villains: Exploring Gothic Fiction’; ‘Writing Lives: the Archive of Working-class Writing’; ‘Writing the Real: Contemporary Non-Fiction’ ‘Codex to Kindle: Reading Into the Digital Age’; ‘Tales of the Marketplace: Capitalism and Critique’.

Background: Creative Writing at LJMU
At Level 4 the Creative Writing modules foster individual voices as well as a responsiveness to stimuli and awareness of the cultural milieu. Observation and Discovery places a strong emphasis on group work and includes a writers' residential in Snowdonia. Key skills such as research and journal-keeping are introduced and developed, and rudimentary techniques to all the major writing forms are introduced in the other core modules of Introductions To Prose, Poetry and Screenwriting, aimed at developing an awareness of the canon and contemporary developments. This awareness is further developed in Exploring Contemporary Arts, which connects writing to the cultural world and in particular, Liverpool's rich and vibrant cultural past and present. In Consuming Passions students engage with what it is that fires them as writers.
 
At Level 5, students choose two specialisms from Prose, Screenwriting and Poetry. These courses develop technical awareness and intensify the study of the canon whilst exploring individual writing in the workshop environment, replicating the professional writer’s skills and habits with deadlines, redrafting and audience response. There are also options in ‘Approaching your Novel’, ‘Fantastic Worlds’, and the highly praised ‘Independent Study’ and ‘Learning at Work modules’ which allow pursuit of specialist projects, such as Graphic Novels, Songwriting, Travel writing, Children's writing.

At Level 6 students take full advantage of the opportunity for self-directed writing. Benefiting from the teaching in the first two years, they live the life of a professional writer. In the second semester they write alone and closely consider their writing in supervised workshop groups, planning, researching, implementing, re-prioritising and re-drafting with a view to placing the finished work in the marketplace. This is supported by the Writer at Work module in which a broad cross-section of representatives and practitioners from the professions give guest lectures.