Karen Burns (academic)
| Karen Burns | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1962 |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Alma mater | Monash University, RMIT University |
| Occupation | Architect |
Karen Burns (born 1962) is an architectural historian and theorist based in Melbourne, Australia. She is currently a senior lecturer in architecture at the Melbourne School of Design, University of Melbourne.
Born in January 1962, Burns grew up in the Melbourne suburb of Beaumaris. Her feminist activism first found expression in 1978 when she worked as a volunteer at a newly established refuge for women and children escaping family violence.
Burns studied English literature and art history at Monash University, the latter with Patrick McCaughey and Conrad Hamann. She was Hamann’s first honours student. Burns graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (hons) in 1984 and a Master of Arts in 1987. She began studying architecture at RMIT University in 1986, and began editing the magazine Transition the same year. Her PhD, "Urban Tourism, 1851-53: sightseeing, representation and The Stones of Venice" was completed in 1999 at the School of Fine Arts, Classical Studies and Archaeology, University of Melbourne.
Burns has held academic positions at a number of universities in Melbourne. She began her academic career at RMIT University (1986–1995) and then joined the Department of English and Cultural Studies and Department of Fine Arts, Classics and Archaeology, University of Melbourne (1997–1999, 2001). She spent three years at the Centre for Ideas, Victorian College of the Arts (2002–2004), of which she was Acting Director in 2002–2003. She joined the new Department of Architecture at Monash University in 2008 and was later appointed as a Senior Lecturer in Architecture at the Melbourne School of Design, University of Melbourne, a position she still holds.
Her academic research focuses on three principal areas: Australian frontier housing and problems of interpretation, late-twentieth-century feminist architectural history and theory, and alliances between architects, aesthetics and manufacturers in mid-nineteenth-century Britain. In relation to the last topic she is working on a book titled Object Lessons: Demonstrating Victorian Design Reform, 1835–1870.
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