Background

I am a proud first generation University graduate.  Having been inspired by some brilliant school teachers, I went on to study English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford and earned a doctorate from the University of Glasgow in the Department of Scottish Literature. My PhD thesis on Romantic-period poetic networks in the north of Ireland was inspired by reading John Hewitt's 'Rhyming Weavers and other folk poets of Ulster' and the work of brilliant scholars in Scotland and Ireland who were exploring the Romantic period beyond the English canon.  

Following this I held the Tower Poetry Lectureship at Christ Church, Oxford during Dr Peter McDonald's research leave, and went on to win an Irish Research Council (IRC) Postdoctoral Fellowship in English at Trinity College Dublin. During my IRC Fellowship I published an edition of Irish Romantic correspondence The Correspondence of Samuel Thomson: Fostering an Irish Writers' Circle (Dublin, 2012) and completed the manuscript for my first monograph Literary Networks and Dissenting Print Culture in Romantic Period Ireland (Palgrave 2015). I joined Newcastle's School of English in 2013.

Prior to holding a permanent academic post, I did a variety of research, administrative, marketing and fundraising roles across various sectors including the Non-Governmental sector and UK Parliament. These experiences have informed and continue to shape my work in the Higher Education sector and I am passionate about making it a welcoming place where students from all backgrounds can flourish.

Roles and Responsibilities

Newcastle Educational Practice Scheme Academic Mentor (2021-)

Secretary of the British Association of Romantic Studies (BARS) @BARS_official (2018-)

Director of Learning and Teaching (DELT) for the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics (2018-2020)

Qualifications

BA; MA (Oxford)

PhD (Glasgow)

Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA) (2017-)

Academic Society and Advisory Board memberships

American and British Societies of Eighteenth Century Studies (ASECS/BSECS)

British Association of Irish Studies (BAIS) 

Eighteenth Century Irish Studies Society (ECIS)

Eighteenth Century Literature Research Network Ireland (ECLRNI)

Labouring Class Poets Online, Academic Advisory Board 

Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore USA  (MdHS)

North East Forum for Eighteenth-Century and Romantic Studies (NEFECRS)

Orchid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4027-4183

Current Work

I research intellectual networks and exchange, particularly Romantic-period correspondence networks, transnationalism and working class writing. 

As a member of Animating Text Newcastle University (ATNU) I am currently working on a funded interdisciplinary project which combines scientific network analysis with traditional humanities methods to examine and visualise relationships among high-profile intellectual and diplomatic communities in Revolutionary France and America. Our successful pilot project can be viewed here: https://warden.atnu.ncl.ac.uk/home.

The wider project will expand the limited dataset of the pilot to incorporate multiple transatlantic archives, comprising a 'who's who' of the transatlantic intellectual and social scene. Many of these letters have never been examined in Anglophone scholarship and include correspondents and mentions from Alexander von Humboldt, Thomas Jefferson, Henri Gregoire, Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper,  Elizabeth Patterson-Bonaparte, Eliza Parke Custis Law, Lady Sydney Morgan and most of the period's most prominent scientists, engineers and learned societies like the Institute National de France, the American Philosophical Society.

I am particularly interested in the connective figures of the circle, particularly its primary hub David Bailie Warden (1772-1845), a political exile-turned-savant whose marginal gender or class status enabled him to transcend an unlikely background to become a central figure of 'betweenness' in the Republic of Letters. This project also looks at constructions of self, identity and 'celebrity' and through public and private writings.

Research Background

Epistolary and intellectual networks have formed a continuous theme of my academic research. As a leading expert on Irish poetry of the Romantic period (1780-1830), I have published a field-defining monograph on Romanticism in the north of Ireland, focusing on literary networks, radical poetry and print culture before and after the French Revolution: Literary Networks and Dissenting Print Culture (Palgrave, 2015). This was supported by a keynote lecture series in the USA at the invitation of the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs.

I have published several articles on the theme of Comparative Romanticism (particularly Scottish and Irish Romanticism), bringing to bear my specialist interest in poetic networks (including coterie culture) and poetic self-fashioning (particularly labouring-class self-fashioning) and working class literature. 

An additional ongoing project involves a pan-European partnership on popular print, with a specialist focus on on ballad culture of North East England, particularly song associated with industrial Tyneside. 

 MLitt/Doctoral Supervision

I am currently supervising the following postgraduate research theses:

• Grainne O'Hare, Public women in print: media, celebrity and ownership of image 1760-1820';
• Michael Scott Tickell, a Creative Writing thesis on the work of Northumberland poet Wilfrid Gibson (1878-1962)

I would welcome prospective supervisees  in my areas of Romantic-period research, particularly poetic circles/coteries, labouring-class poetry, Scottish/Irish poetry of the 18th/19th Centuries, and religious dissenting literature. Authors might include: Robert Burns (and Scottish Romantic writers generally), P.B. Shelley, William Blake, Maria Edgeworth, Samuel Thomson, Thomas Dermody, James Orr.

Selective Research Grants

Newcastle Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Research Grant (2017-)

Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (with partners) (2016-2019)

Newcastle Institute of Social Renewal Grant (2014)

Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship (2013)

Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship (2012-13)

Faculty of Arts PGR Scholarship, University of Glasgow (2008-2010)

I am on research leave until the academic year 2022/23 but normally contribute to the following courses: 

SEL1004 Introduction to Literary Studies

SEL2203 Revolutionary Britain, 1789-1832 

SEL3362 BA Dissertation (national identity, poetry, working class writing, religious dissent and four nations Romanticism, vernacular language)

SEL3365 Independent Essay 

SEL3379 Enlightened Romantics: writing at the margins* (module convener) 

*My Stage 3 elective module (SEL3379) particularly reflects my research expertise and interests.  The aim is that students go away from the course which a much broader understanding of Romanticism and an appreciation of the role that social class and contested national and regional identities play in our understanding of literature.  

• Orr JSL. Enlightened Ulster, Romantic Ulster: Irish Magazine Culture of the Union Era. In: Claire Connolly, ed. Irish Literature in Transition: 1780-1830. Cambridge University Press, 2020, pp.148-170.
• Orr J. Transnational Ulster and labouring-class self-fashioning. In: Goodridge, J; Keegan, B, ed. A History of British Working Class Literature. Cambridge University Press, 2017, pp.130-148.
• Orr J. Literary Networks and Dissenting Print Culture in Romantic-Period Ireland. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
• Orr J. Constructing the Ulster Labouring-class Poet: The Case of Samuel Thomson. In: Blair, K., Gorji, M, ed. Class and the Canon: Constructing Labouring-Class Poetry and Poetics, 1780-1900. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, pp.34-54.
• Orr J. The Continuity of Scottish Enlightenment Culture in the North of Ireland. Eighteenth Century Scottish Studies Society Newsletter 2012, 26, 8-12.
• Orr J. The Correspondence of Samuel Thomson (1766-1816): Fostering an Irish writers' circle. In: Kelly, J ed. Ulster and Scotland 2012. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 12, 242.
• Orr J. Samuel Thomson. The Literary Encyclopedia 2011.
• Orr J. "No John Clare": Minute Observations from the Ulster Cottage Door 1790-1800. John Clare Society Journal 2010, 29, 51-70.
• Orr J. "In costume Scotch o’er bog and park, my hame-bred muse delighted plays": Samuel Thomson's fashioning of landscape in Ulster Poetry. Scottish Literary Review 2010, 2(1), 41-58.
• Orr J. ‘1798, Before, and Beyond: Samuel Thomson and the poetics of Ulster-Scots identity’. In: Holmes, A; Ferguson, F, ed. Revising Robert Burns and Ulster: Revising Robert Burns and Ulster: literature, religion, and politics, c.1700-1920. Dublin: Four Courts, 2009, pp.106-126.
• Orr J, Carruthers G. The Deil's awa wi' the Exciseman: Robert Burns the giver of guns to Revolutionary France. In: Rodger, J; Carruthers, G, ed. Fickle Man: Robert Burns in the 21st Century. Edinburgh: Sandstone, 2009, pp.106-126.
• Orr J. ‘Samuel Thomson’s Pikes and Politics: Negotiating a Place in Scottish and Irish Literature’. In: Jacqueline Ryder & Aimee McNair, ed. Further from the frontiers: cross-currents in Irish and Scottish Studies. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 2009, pp.151ff.
• Orr J. Seceders and Satire: Ulster Poetry of the Romantic Period. Dawsonville, GA, USA: Frank R. Shaw, 2013. Available at: http://www.electricscotland.com/familytree/frank/burns_lives181.htm.
• Orr Jennifer. A young Irish scholar's transatlantic pilgrimage to the Burns Club of Atlanta and beyond. Dawsonville, GA, USA: Frank R. Shaw, 2013. Available at: http://www.electricscotland.com/familytree/frank/burns_lives184.htm.
• Orr J. To Mr Robert Burns”: Verse Epistles from an Irish Poetic Circle. Dawsonville, GA, USA: Frank R. Shaw, 2009. Available at: http://www.electricscotland.com/familytree/frank/burns_lives62.htm.
• Orr J. Eddi Reader's Rabbie Burns Trip. Belfast & Glasgow: Tern Television, 2013.
• Orr J. Samuel Thomson of Carngranny. Belfast: BBC, 2012.
• Orr J. BBC Robert Burns. Glasgow: BBC, 2009.
• Orr JSL. Transgressing the Territory of Tradition. Women: A Cultural Review 2018, 29(3-4), 401-404.
• Orr Jennifer. Robert Burns and Ireland. In: Carruthers, Gerard; Gallagher, Kevin, ed. Oxford Handbook of Robert Burns. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Submitted.