Dr Siv Jansson

Teaching Fellow, Institute for Design Innovation

Siv Jansson

Dr Siv Jansson has worked at a range of institutions in the UK and overseas, including eight years living and working in New Zealand and eight months living in Australia. She teaches on ‘Identity, Culture and Communication'.

In the UK she has worked at Imperial College, The Open University, Royal Holloway (University of London), the University of Greenwich, and Middlesex University, amongst many others. In New Zealand she worked primarily at the University of Auckland, but also had periods teaching at Victoria University of Wellington, Auckland University of Technology and Unitec. Currently she also teaches on a range of programmes at Birkbeck College; she is a Team Leader and Examiner for Pearson Education and Oxford and Cambridge Examinations.  She was Literary Advisor on the BBC drama, 'To Walk Invisible' (2016).

Academic background

Siv's specialism is English literature, where she has extensive teaching, research and publication experience; publications include Introduction & Notes for Frankenstein (series ed. Keith Carabine, Wordsworth Classics); ‘The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall: Rejecting The Angel's Influence’, Women Of Faith In Victorian Culture, (eds. Anne Hogan & Andrew Bradstock, Macmillan) ‘The Difference Of Viewing: Female Detectives In Fiction & On Film’, Sisterhoods, eds. Deborah Cartmell, I.Q. Hunter, Heidi Kaye & Imelda Whelehan, Pluto Press). She also has a teaching and research background in a number of other areas, including academic writing, media and communication, cultural studies, gender studies, theatre and drama, conflict resolution studies, social sciences and youth work. More specifically, she has devised and taught a number of courses on academic writing and critical skills, identity and cultural studies (particularly the history of subcultures and cultural studies theory), and media (including the sociology of the media, critical responses to advertising, deconstructing imagery and language, media theory).

In recent years she has begun to develop her work in academic writing and has supported students in this area at a number of the institutions where she has taught. Her work background also includes theatre and musical performance (as a professional singer/actress), and freelance engagements in market research as interviewer/supervisor/project manager.

Current research and collaborations

She is currently working on articles on biography, film and literature, adaptation, and celebrity culture. Most recently her essay, ‘Their Name was Brontё: Brontё Biography on Screen’ appeared in Brontё  Studies (Taylor and Francis). She has forthcoming articles on 'Cleopatra' (1963) and celebrity culture, the Victorian art critic Elizabeth Rigby, and Brontё biography, and is the early stages of work on the performance of death (interdisciplinary), eating disorder narratives, weddings in history and culture, and pedagogy and the teaching of academic writing in universities.

Interests and activities

Siv retains her Equity membership as a former professional performer, and belongs to several literary societies. In her spare time, she works as a volunteer for different charities, including the Cats’ Protection League and Trinity Family Centre. She is a member of the British Association for Victorian Studies and does regular peer and book reviewing for a number of academic journals, including The Wilkie Collins Review, Revenant and Brontё Studies. Travel remains one of her great passions and she has had some memorable travel experiences, including travelling across the USA on Amtrak, and sailing from Auckland to Easter Island on the 'Soren Larsen', a tallship: she wrote about the experience on their website.

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