Jennifer Orr
Jennifer Orr
Jennifer Orr graduated from the University of Oxford in 2006 with a degree in English Language and Literature. After specialising in Anglo-Saxon and Medieval studies she began to work on eighteenth-century poetry, writing her undergraduate thesis on the ‘Rhyming Weaver’ poets of Ulster. After spending a further year as a University fundraiser for Oxford, she joined the Department of Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow in November 2007 to begin research into the poetry of Samuel Thomson, Bard of Carngranny (1766-1816), an Ulster poet of the Eighteenth Century. As a result she spends much of her time hopping between the two islands.
Jennie’s research is funded by a Faculty of Arts Scholarship and supported by bursaries from the University of Glasgow and the British Association for Romantic Studies. In March 2008 she was awarded the Stephen Copley Postgraduate Bursary to undertake work with eighteenth-century manuscripts at Trinity College, Dublin.
Her current research interests lie in the literature and history of the ‘long’ Eighteenth Century including: Robert Burns, the Ulster weaver poets, the Augustan pastoral tradition, Romanticism, the Belfast radical press of the 1790’s and the United Irish rebellion.
Forthcoming papers:
“Samuel Thomson’s Pikes and Politics: Negotiating a Place in Scottish and Irish Literature”, 7th Annual Crosscurrents Conference, The University of Strathclyde, 18th-20th April 2008.
Jennie is a member of the ‘Spinning Scotland’ organising committee at the University of Glasgow and can be contacted at j.orr.1@research.gla.ac.uk