Professor Lynne Pearce

Research Interests

Lynne Pearce arrived at Lancaster in 1990/1, having gained her PhD from the University of Birmingham in 1987. Whilst studying for her PhD, and in the years immediately following, she worked part-time across of wide-range of further and higher educational establishments in the West Midlands, and then - for one year - in the English Department at the University of Durham. This apprenticeship remains vitally important to the values she attaches to Higher Education (especially in terms of access to those from less privileged backgrounds) and to her recognition of the challenges faced by graduate students embarking on an academic career.

Lynne Pearce's teaching and research have been mainly in the field of feminist literary and cultural theory, but with wide-ranging historical and disciplinary interests. Particular thematic concerns have been in 'the politics of reading', feminist re-scriptings of romance, and national / regional literature(s) and identities within the UK. Her most recent books are:  

The Rhetorics of Feminism: Readings in Contemporary Cultural Theory and the Popular Press  (Routledge, 2004); Romance Writing  (Polity, 2007); and (with Corinne Fowler and Robert Crawshaw) Postcolonial Manchester: Diaspora Space and the Devolution of Literary Culture  (Manchester University Press,  forthcoming 2013).

The first of these explores the ways in which rhetorical and stylistic innovation in writers as diverse as Judith Butler and Germaine Greer has impacted upon contemporary thought-production; the second surveys the changing  expression of romantic love from the seventeenth century to the present day; while Postcolonial Manchester  (the final output of the ?Moving Manchester' project ? see below)  investigates the ways in which Manchester's polycultural writing scene  challenges popular stereotypes of the city at the same time as contributing to the ?devolution' of contemporary British literature from its London-centric publishing heartland In terms of teaching and administration, Lynne Pearce's work has centred on the postgraduate community. From 1997-2001 she was Director of Postgraduate Studies in the English Department and, in that capacity, was responsible for initiating a good deal of the research methods training now available both within the Department and the Faculty. From 2001-2003 she was Associate Dean for Postgraduate Teaching in the Humanities and convenor of the Faculty's Research Methods seminar.  

Since coming to Lancaster, she has also supervised 25 PhD students of her own to successful completion and remains committed to improving the postgraduate  student experience in her capacity as FASS RTP tutor and through contributing to Research Methods teaching in the Department of English & Creative Writing.  She is currently enjoying another term as Director of Postgraduate Studies in the Department and teaches courses on Thesis Writing, Writing for Publication and Conference Presentation for the Faculty.From 2006-2010 Lynne Pearce was Principal Investigator for the AHRC-funded project 'Moving Manchester: How the experience of migration has informed the work of writers from Greater Manchester from 1960-to the present' (see website at www.transculturalwriting.com)). Project outputs include: ?an e-catalogue, an online ?Writers' Gallery',  and over 50 publications (creative and critical) all of which are listed on the ?Moving Manchester' website.

Lynne Pearce  is now beginning work on a new research project ?broadly, the cultural history of (car) driving  -  which will begin with a book that investigates the different states of consciousness that accompany the driving-event as evidenced in literary and other texts.  See the article ?Automobility in Manchester Fiction' (Mobilities 7.1, 2012) for some indication of the form this new research will take.

Lynne Pearce is a member of the following networks and associations: 

IASPR (The Association for Popular Romance Studies) [also Board member]

The Memory Network

The Love Research Network

Single-Authored Book Publications include:

Woman/Image/Text: Readings in Pre-Raphaelite Art & Literature  (Harvester-Wheatsheaf, 1991)

Reading Dialogics  (Edward Arnold, 1994)

Feminism and the Politics of Reading  (Arnold, 1997)

Devolving Identies: Feminist Readings in Home and Belonging (ed.) (2000)

The Rhetorics of Feminism  (Routledge, 2004)

Romance Writing  (Polity, 2007)

During her time at Lancaster, Lynne Pearce has also been centrally involved with the teaching, research and research activities emanating from the Institute for Gender and Women's Studies, and is co-editor, with Maureen McNeil, of the series Transformations: Thinking Through Feminism  (see Routledge web-site for further details). She is thus more than happy to act as a point of contact for people interested in the work of the Institute or, indeed, in research projects which might involve colleagues in both English and Women's Studies.

• Researchers and Writers at Lancaster debate the Shrinking Globe

  04/09/2009
  Hundreds of writers and researchers from across the world are heading to the North West this month (9-12th September) to share the results of a four year project investigating the impact of migrati ... Read more»

• Grand Finale of "Moving Manchester" Project

  06/03/2009
  Academics from across the world have signed up to attend an international conference marking the culmination of "Moving Manchester", a four year project about how migration has informed creative writi ... Read more»