Dr Amy Webster
Amy joined BGU in the summer of 2020 as a Senior Lecturer in Education Studies after finishing her PhD at the University of Cambridge.
She has a BA (Hons) in Education with Primary Qualified Teacher Status from Durham University and an MPhil in Education with distinction from Cambridge. She was also previously an Associate Lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University. Her doctoral project focused on the historical recovery and analysis of British series of children’s classics using digital humanities methods, particularly historical shifts in the titles included in series and how these classic works have been abridged and repackaged since the turn of the twentieth century.
Amy is part of the Literature and Literacies (LiLi) Research and Knowledge Exchange Unit and is co-editor of The Four Corners, BGU’s newsletter on children’s literature.
She teaches on the Education Studies undergraduate programme as well as the new MA in Children’s Literature and Literacies. She also supervises dissertations on the MA in Education.
Education Studies
EDU121: Perspectives on Learning
EDU123: The Brains Behind It
EDU323: Inspiring Learning – Readin, ‘Riting and Revellin’
EDU325: Independent Study
EDU327: Dissertation
MA in English Literature and MA in Children’s Literature and Literacies
CLL709: Children’s Literacies: Now, New, Next
ELI709: Critiquing and Theorising Literature
ELI707: Dissertation
MA in Education
MAE705: Dissertation
Amy’s research interests include data driven approaches to studying children’s literature, the children’s publishing industry, the re-publication of children’s texts and the Golden Age of children’s literature.
Her PhD thesis entitled ‘River Banks, Railway Children and Rabbit Holes: Charting series of children’s classics’ can be found and requested through the Cambridge online repository Apollo: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/308016
Webster, A. (2021). British Children’s Classics in the Modern City: A Tale of Two Series. Paper to be given at the Modern Languages Association International Convention as part of the panel ‘Streetwise: Children's Literature and Culture in the Modern City’ co-sponsored by the Children’s Literature Association and the Modernist Studies Association, Washington DC.
Webster, A. (2020). Literature, Golden Age. In The SAGE Encyclopaedia of Children and Childhood Studies. London: SAGE.
Webster A. (2020). The repackaging of classic children’s books in modern series. Paper given at the online launch event for the History of the Printed Image Network, hosted by the University of Wolverhampton, UK.
Webster, A. (2020). A diverse, data driven approach to studying children’s classics. Paper given at the Kaleidoscope Annual Conference Inclusive ways of knowing diverging from tradition, University of Cambridge, UK.
Webster, A. (2019). A very English tea time: Taking tea, table manners and….. a tiger! Paper given at Consuming Children - A roundtable discussion, Manchester Metropolitan University Special Collections, Manchester, UK.
Webster, A. (2018). Tea, table manners and... a tiger: Exploring how children’s literature transforms the traditional English tea time. FEAST special edition ‘Consuming Children’ 7.
Webster, A. (2018). The historical recovery and statistical analysis of ‘the children's classics’. Paper given at the Conference of the International Society for the Empirical Study of Literature and Media, Stavanger, Norway.
Webster, A., & Harrison, A. (2018). Using classics creatively in the primary classroom: recent research and practical perspectives. Presentation and workshop session given at the United Kingdom Literacy Association International Conference, Cardiff, Wales.
Webster, A. (2018). Traditions transformed in children’s literature. Paper given at the Arts and Humanities Research Council International Conference, University of Cambridge, UK
Research Funding Grant, Magdalene College, University of Cambridge, 2019
Research Funding Grant, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, 2018
Vice Chancellor’s Award for PhD funding, The Cambridge University Trust, 2015-2018
Newton MPhil Award for Master's funding, The Cambridge University Trust, 2014-2015