Steven Burgess

Profile

In 2011, I graduated from Sheffield Hallam University with a BA(Hons) in English and Education Studies and a Level 5 CertTESOL. My undergraduate dissertation focused on the integration of non-native English speakers into mainstream classrooms through a case study investigation at a secondary school in special measures on the outskirts of Doncaster, South Yorkshire.

Following my degree, I began working with EAL and SEND students in a secondary school in West Yorkshire before becoming a KS4 Mentor with those who were struggling to reach their GCSE targets in Maths and English before undertaking a PGCE in Secondary English at the University of Leeds through a salaried School Direct route. After qualifying to teach, I worked to become Head of Subject for English Language across both GCSE and A-Level, the school-wide Digital Learning Lead over the course of the pandemic, and continued to mentor ITT students.

Since leaving teaching in 2021,my work now focuses on academic representation and community organising in HE. This work aims to support students to increase relational power amongst student groups to evoke change in their areas of study, as well as delivering on more broad-based campaign work. This enabled me to gain Fellowship with AdvanceHE (FHEA) alongside studying for my MA in English Literature, again at the University of Leeds. I am also currently undertaking a PGCert in Community Organising as part of my work.

For my MA, I was keen to focus my learning on literature that was either directly or tangetially related to the Pre-Raphaelite movement in the mid-late nineteenth century. This culminated in my dissertation which was focused on the first two novels of William De Morgan, and his representations of social class and the environment in each of these. This dissertation has formed the basis of my PhD research which aims to continue in this area, further contextualising and realising De Morgan as a key player in literature at the start of the twentieth century, and explore his use of realism in his socioecological representations of England.

Qualifications

• BA(Hons) English and Education Studies
• MA English Literature
• PGCE Secondary English
• FHEA