Dr Debbie Parker Kinch

Professional biography

My academic background is in English Literature and Women’s and Gender History, and I have taught for the Open University since 2009. I completed my PhD at the School of Area Studies, History, Politics and Literature, University of Portsmouth. My PhD thesis is a biography of Bessie Parkes Belloc (1829-1925), a writer and women’s rights activist.

Research interests

My research interests are focused on women’s literary writing, particularly poetry, of the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries; the history of feminism; life writing, particularly the theory and practice of writing biography, including feminist approaches. My journal article ‘“We who strive for the foundation of a principle”: feminism and suffrage in the biography of Bessie Parkes Belloc’ was published in the Women’s History Review  (DOI: 10.1080/09612025.2020.1745399)

Teaching interests

I am currently Deputy Interdisciplinary Qualification Lead for the Arts and Humanities at the OU and Lead Cluster Manager for the OU module A111, 'Discovering the Arts and Humanities'. I am also a member of the Module Team for OU module A335 ('Literature in transition: from 1800 to the present') and I co-authored a unit on Sylvia Plath's Ariel for the OU undergraduate English Literature module A240 ('Literature Matters'). I have also tutored on and managed several other English Literature and interdisciplinary Arts modules at the OU.

My teaching interests are in the pedagogy of teaching English Literature and supporting students to gain confidence as academic writers, particularly in online environments, and also in approaches to interdisciplinary teaching in the Humanities.