Staff Profile

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

Background

I am proud to be a 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 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.

In addition to teaching and research, I hold a number of administrative and mentoring roles within the School and University. I am the School's Academic Lead for Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity. I am a Senior Fellow of Advance HE (SFHEA) in recognition of my contribution to teaching and mentoring in my roles as Director of Education for SELLL and as a mentor for Advance HE accreditation via Newcastle Education Practice Skills.

Roles and Responsibilities

SELLL Academic Lead for Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity (2025-)

Senior Fellow of Advance HE (SFHEA) (2024-)

DADA (formerly Data) NUCoRE Theme co-Lead for Digital Humanities (2023-)

Previous roles

Newcastle Educational Practice Scheme Academic Mentor (2022-2024)

SELLL PGR Project Approval Board Chair (2022-2024)

SELLL Director of Learning and Teaching (2018-2020)

University Communications Committee HaSS Faculty Representative (2014-2016)

Web, Marketing, and Social Media Officer for the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics (2013-2017)

Current Work

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

I am currently working on an interdisciplinary scholarly editing project which combines scientific network analysis with traditional humanities methods to examine and visualise the correspondence and intellectual network of David Bailie Warden (1772-1845), a key hub in the history of transatlantic bibliography. Our successful pilot project can be viewed here: https://warden.atnu.ncl.ac.uk/home.

The wider project will expand the 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 most of the prominent scientist and writers of the day as well as learned societies like the Institute National de France and the American Philosophical Society. My recently published work in the Routledge History of Irish America has shown the darker side of anti-Irish nativism at work within the early American republic in response to the rise of Irish emigrants and their descents such as David Bailie Warden and radical newspaper editor William Duane of the Philadelphia Aurora. You can see an excerpt of this work, in an invited paper for the Ulster American Heritage Symposium in June 2024: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtTSajSRTPs

I have, and continue to, contribute to public engagement projects in Northern Ireland including Tourism NI, Reclaim the Enlightenment and the Linen Hall Library, Belfast. The project has attracted several keynote and invited speaking engagements including the Ecole de Paris and the Byron Society.

Research Background

Epistolary and intellectual networks have formed a continuous theme of my academic research. As a established expert on Irish poetry and radical politics 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, Dissenting pedagogy, and print culture before and after the French Revolution: Literary Networks and Dissenting Print Culture (Palgrave, 2015). This included an in-depth study of cosmopolitan networks at the heart of, and connected to, radical Belfast including figures which are now being returned to prominence such as Samuel Thomson, James Orr, William Hamilton Drummond, Andrew M'Kenzie, Robert Huddleston, Robert Anderson, Mary Ann McCracken, Samuel and Martha McTier and William Drennan.

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. 

Postgraduate Supervision

I have supervised PGR topics from Romantic writing to twentieth-century Northumbrian poetry. I am currently supervising 3 postgraduate research theses:

• Grainne O'Hare on Methodist women's life writing and control of public image
• Jennifer Tattersall on Anna Letitia Barbauld's cosmopolitan pedagogy and its transnational influence
• Madeleine Cunliffe on supernatural political economy of James Hogg

I would welcome prospective supervisees in the following areas of Romantic-period research:

• Poetic circles/coteries
• Labouring-class poetry
• Scottish/Irish poetry of the 18th/19th Centuries
• Religion and religious dissenting literature
• Political culture in the 18th/19th Centuries 
• Book history and popular print

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)

Esteem Indicators

• Invited speaker, Byron Society (2025)
• Judge, Ulster Scots Writing Competition, Linen Hall Library (2024)
• External Consultant, BA Creative Writing & English Literature, Edge Hill University (2024-2025)
• Invited speaker, 'Robert Fergusson at 250', University of Glasgow (2024)
• Invited keynote speaker, 'Education for Enlightenment', Reclaim the Enlightenment, First Presbyterian Church Belfast (2024)
• Vice President, British Association for Romantic Studies (https://www.bars.ac.uk) (2023-)
• Invited keynote speaker, ‘Seizing Artistic Migrations and Creations Through Their Networks’, Ecole de Paris (2023)
• Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (2023-)
• Visiting Lecturer at Creighton University, Nebraska
• Keynote and invited conference lectures in the UK, Western Europe and north America including Irish Department of Foreign Affairs lecture series for the Consulate General of Ireland, Georgia, USA.  
• Editorial Board Member of Laboring Class Poets online (https://lcpoets.org/) 

I am on research sabbatical in Semester 1 of 24/25 but normally contribute to the following modules:

SEL1004 Introduction to Literary Studies

SEL2203 Revolutionary Britain, 1789-1832 

SEL3362 BA Dissertation

SEL3365 Independent Essay 

SEL3379 Enlightened Romantics: A Revolution in Feeling*

SEL8533 Radicalisms (MA)

*Elective Final Honours module based on my research specialism

• Articles

  • 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. 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.

• Authored Book

  • Orr J. Literary Networks and Dissenting Print Culture in Romantic-Period Ireland. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

• Book Chapters

  • Orr Jennifer. Robert Burns and Ireland. In: Carruthers G, ed. Oxford Handbook of Robert Burns. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024, pp.421–436.
  • Orr J. Cosmopolitan Insights from Early Irish-American Letter Networks. In: McMahon CT; Costello-Sullivan KP, ed. The Routledge History of Irish America. New York: Routledge, 2024, pp.83-95.
  • 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. 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, 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. ‘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.

• Digital or Visual Media

  • Orr J, Logan L. David Bailie Warden: from Exile to Paris. Belfast: Northern Vision Television, 2024.
  • 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.

• Online Publications

  • 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.

• Review

  • Orr JSL. Transgressing the Territory of Tradition. Women: A Cultural Review 2018, 29(3-4), 401-404.

• Scholarly Edition

  • 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.