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Professor Robert Burroughs

Dean of School

Robert Burroughs is Professor and Head of English at Leeds Beckett University, UK. He is a cultural historian and literary critic working on the nineteenth century. He specializes in the areas of empire, humanitarianism, slavery, race, and Black British history. He has also published widely research on travel and tourism, particularly in marine environments.

An expert on King Leopold II's Congo Free State, in 2022, Rob served as an expert witness in the Belgian Parliament's Special Commission on the colonial past.

For 2024, Rob is Linda H. Peterson Fellow of the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals, undertaking a project titled 'S.J. Celestine Edwards, the "Black Champion" of Victorian Oral and Print Culture'.

Rob's books include Travel Writing and Atrocities (Routledge 2011, 2015), The Suppression of the Atlantic Slave Trade (co-edited, Manchester UP 2015, 2017), African Testimony in the Movement for Congo Reform (Routledge 2018), and Black Students in Imperial Britain (Liverpool UP, 2022- available freely)

Rob's articles have appeared in leading journals including Victorian Literature and Culture, Journal of Victorian Culture, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Slavery & Abolition, and Postcolonial Studies.

Rob is a recipient of funding from the AHRC, The Leverhulme Trust (Early Career Fellowship, 2007-09, and Research Fellow 2019-20), the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (2014-17), and the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals (2024).

Current Teaching

Short stories
Black British Culture
Theory into Practice
Atlantic Slavery

Research Interests

Black people in print and on stage in nineteenth-century Britain. This research continues the work of his previous book in exploring black people's role in local and national cultures at the heart of the British Empire. As Linda H. Peterson Fellow of the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals, in 2024 Rob will pursue these interests in a study of S.J. Celestine Edwards (c.1858-94) , Britain's first black publishers and a prolific speaker and author
Building on previous work on gratitude and race, study of emotions in British imperialism and debates on empire of today
Historic consultant in museum/exhibition space, Colwyn Bay, Wales

0113 812 0000
R.M.Burroughs@leedsbeckett.ac.uk
Portland Building, 209, City Campus

School of Humanities and Social Sciences

Ask Me About

Imperialism
Ethnicity
History
Literature
Popular culture
Race

Selected Outputs

Burroughs R (2022) Imperial entanglements of the Congo/African Institute, Colwyn Bay, Wales (1889-1911). In: Fraiture P-P ed. Unfinished Histories Empire and Postcolonial Resonance in Central Africa and Belgium.
Burroughs R (2019) 'Memory'. In: Keywords for Travel Writing Studies A Critical Glossary. Anthem Press,
Burroughs R (2019) 'Psychoanalysis'. In: Keywords for Travel Writing Studies A Critical Glossary. Anthem Press,
Burroughs R (2019) 'Extreme travel',. In: Keywords for Travel Writing Studies A Critical Glossary.
Burroughs RM (2019) Travel Writing and Rivers. In: Das N; Youngs T ed. The Cambridge History of Travel Writing. Cambridge University Press, pp. 330-344.
Burroughs R (2018) Introduction. In: African Testimony in the Movement for Congo Reform. Routledge, pp. 1-22.
Burroughs R (2018) Humanitarianism and diplomacy. In: African Testimony in the Movement for Congo Reform. Routledge, pp. 23-43.
Burroughs R (2018) Behind the Casement report (1903–4). In: African Testimony in the Movement for Congo Reform. Routledge, pp. 44-74.
Burroughs R (2018) Before the Commission of Inquiry (1904–5). In: African Testimony in the Movement for Congo Reform. Routledge, pp. 75-103.
Burroughs R (2018) The silencing of witnesses. In: African Testimony in the Movement for Congo Reform. Routledge, pp. 104-129.
Burroughs R (2018) ‘Bringing hands to the English’. In: African Testimony in the Movement for Congo Reform. Routledge, pp. 130-158.
Burroughs R (2018) Conclusion. In: African Testimony in the Movement for Congo Reform. Routledge, pp. 159-168.
Burroughs R (2017) Suppression of the Atlantic slave trade. In: The suppression of the Atlantic slave trade. Manchester University Press,
Burroughs RM (2015) Slave-trade suppression and the culture of anti-slavery in nineteenth-century Britain. In: Burroughs R; Huzzey R ed. The suppression of the Atlantic slave trade: British policies, practices and representations of naval coercion. Manchester University Press,
Burroughs RM (2015) Suppression of the Atlantic slave trade: abolition from ship to shore. In: Burroughs R; Huzzey R ed. The suppression of the Atlantic slave trade: British policies, practices and representations of naval coercion. Manchester University Press,
Burroughs RM (2015) Gaskell on the waterfront: Leisure, labor, and maritime space in the mid-nineteenth century. In: Scholl L; Morris E ed. Place Progress and Personhood in the Works of Elizabeth Gaskell. Ashgate (Routledge), pp. 11-22.

Burroughs RM (2014) 'The Force Publique in late-nineteenth-century humanitarian discourse and popular culture'. In: Europe Made in Africa: The Congo Free State in European Culture, 20 September 2014, Uppsala University, Sweden.
Burroughs RM (2013) ‘“Savage times come again”: The African Soldiery in H.G. Wells’s When the Sleeper Wakes (1899)’. In: Social Fabrics: Utopias and Dystopias in the Writings of H.G. Wells and William Morris, Kelmscott House, London.

Burroughs RM (2009) 'Race' and Anthropology' [Online] Gale Cengage Learning.

Available from: https://www.gale.com/intl/essays/robert-burroughs-race-anthropology

Burroughs R (In press) North and South and the Sea: Geography, Labour, and ‘Condition of England’ Fiction. Literary Geographies
Burroughs R (2023) Autographs, Autobiography, and Black History in Britain: the Congo House Autograph Book. Cahiers victoriens et édouardiens, (98), pp. 1-11.

https://doi.org/10.4000/cve.13752
Burroughs R (2022) The redeemed life of Lena Clark, Christian missionary in the Congo Free State. Cultural and Social History

https://doi.org/10.1080/14780038.2022.2102564
Burroughs R (2020) The racialisation of gratitude in Victorian culture. Journal of Victorian Culture

https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcaa023
Burroughs RM (2016) ‘Savage times come again’ : Morel, Wells, and the African Soldier, c.1885-1920. English Studies in Africa: a journal of the humanities, 59 (1), pp. 40-51.

https://doi.org/10.1080/00138398.2016.1173276
Burroughs RM (2016) ‘The Nautical Melodrama of Mary Barton’. Victorian Literature and Culture, 44 (1), pp. 77-95.

https://doi.org/10.1017/S1060150315000431
Burroughs RM (2015) Weird farang thing: dark tourism in Alex Garland’s The Beach (1996). Postcolonial Studies, 17 (3), pp. 320-333.

https://doi.org/10.1080/13688790.2014.987896
Burroughs R (2011) Sailors and Slaves: The ‘Poor Enslaved Tar’ in Naval Reform and Nautical Melodrama. Journal of Victorian Culture, 16 (3), pp. 305-322.

https://doi.org/10.1080/13555502.2011.611693
Burroughs R (2010) Eyes on the Prize: Journeys in Slave Ships Taken as Prizes by the Royal Navy. Slavery & Abolition, 31 (1), pp. 99-115.

https://doi.org/10.1080/01440390903481688
Burroughs R (2010) The travelling apologist: May French Sheldon in the Congo Free State (1903-04). Studies in Travel Writing, 14 (2), pp. 135-157.

https://doi.org/10.1080/13645141003747231
Burroughs R (2009) ‘[T]he true sailors of Western Africa’: Kru seafaring identity in British travellers’ accounts of the 1830s and 1840s. Journal for Maritime Research, 11 (1), pp. 51-67.

https://doi.org/10.1080/21533369.2009.9668368
Burroughs R (2009) Imperial eyes or 'the eyes of another race'? roger casement's travels in west africa. Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 37 (3), pp. 383-397.

https://doi.org/10.1080/03086530903157581
Burroughs RM (2006) In Conrad’s Footsteps: Critical Approaches to Africanist Travel Writing. Literature Compass, 3 (4), pp. 924-939.

https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-4113.2006.00365.x

Burroughs R (2022) Black Students in Imperial Britain The African Institute, Colwyn Bay, 1889-1911. Liverpool University Press.
Burroughs R (2018) African Testimony in the Movement for Congo Reform: The Burden of Proof. Routledge.
(2017) The suppression of the Atlantic slave trade. Manchester University Press.
eds. Burroughs R; Huzzey R (2015) The Suppression of the Atlantic Slave Trade: British Policies, Practices and Representations of Naval Coercion. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Burroughs RM (2011) Travel Writing and Atrocities. Taylor & Francis.