- Fellow type
- UK Fellow
- Year elected
- 2014
- Honours
- OBE
- Sections
- Modern History from 1850
Joanna Bourke is Professor Emerita of History at Birkbeck, University of London, and Professor Emerita at Gresham College. She is the prize-winning author of 15 books and over 120 academic articles. She writes on sexual violence, modern warfare, psychology and psychiatry, the emotions, 'evil', Higher Education, and what it means to be human.
She is currently writing a history of female cultures of drinking. Among others, she is the author of 'An Intimate History of Killing' (1999, which won the Wolfson Prize and the Fraenkel Prize), 'Fear' (2005), 'Rape' (2007), 'What it Means To Be Human' (2011), 'The Story of Pain' (2014), 'Wounding the World: How Military Violence and War-Play are Invading our Lives' (2014), and 'Loving Animals' (2019).
In 2022, Reaktion Books published 'Disgrace: Global Reflections on Sexual Violence' (also published by Chicago University Press and as an audiobook) and OUP published 'Birkbeck: 200 Years of Radical Education for Working People'. Her books have been translated into Chinese, Russian, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Portuguese, Czech, Turkish, Korean, and Greek. She is a frequent contributor to TV and radio shows, and a regular correspondent for newspapers.
10-Minute Talks: Domestic and sexual violence during COVID-19
11 Nov 2020 Professor Joanna Bourke FBA
In this talk, Joanna Bourke outlines how the pandemic has exacerbated, not created, the problem of domestic and sexual violence in our society.
Current post
Professor of History, Birkbeck, University of London
Past appointments
Birkbeck College University of London Professor of History
1970 -
Publications
Birkbeck: 200 Years of Radical Learning for Working People
Published in 2022 by Oxford University Press
Disgrace: Global Reflections on Sexual Violence
Published in 2022 by Reaktion Books and Chicago University Press
Loving Animals: On Bestiality, Zoophilia and Post-Human Love
Published in 2020 by Reaktion Books
War and Art: A Visual History of Modern Conflict
Edited by Joanna Bourke - Published in 2017 by Reaktion Books
Edited volume
Wounding the World: How Military Violence and War-Play Are Invading Our Lives
Published in 2014 by Virago and Counterpoint
250pp
The Story of Pain: From Prayer to Painkillers
Published in 2014 by Oxford University Press
It has been translated into Turkish (Koe University Press).
What It Means To Be Human, Historical Reflections 1791 to the Present
Published in 2011 by Virago and Counterpoint
Rape: A History from 1860s to the Present
Published in 2007 by Virago and Shoemaker and Hoard
It has been translated into Italian, Spanish, Czech, Russian, Chinese, and Greek.
Fear: A Cultural History
Published in 2005 by Virago and Shoemaker and Hoard
It has been translated into Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, and Greek. It was on the final shortlist for the Mind Book of the Year.
The Second World War: A People’s History
Published in 2001 by Oxford University Press
It has been translated into Italian, Spanish, and Catalan.
The Penguin Atlas of British and Irish History. From Earliest Times to the Present Day
Edited by Barry Cunliffe, Robert Bartlett, John Morrill, Asa Briggs, and Joanna Bourke - Published in 2001 by Penguin
The Misfit Soldier
Edward Casey [pseud. John William Roworth]introduction by Joanna Bourke - Published in 1999 by Cork University Press
An Intimate History of Killing: Face-to-Face Killing in Twentieth Century Warfare
Published in 1999 by Granta and Basic
It has been translated into Chinese, Czech, Russian, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Greek, and Turkish. It won the 2000 Wolfson History Prize as well as the 1998 Fraenkel Prize in Contemporary History. It was in the final shortlist for the W. H. Smith Literary Prize in 2000.
Dismembering the Male: Men's Bodies, Britain, and the Great War
Published in 1996 by Reaktion Press, and University of Chicago Press
Working-Class Cultures in Britain, 1890-1960: Gender, Class and Ethnicity
Published in 1994 by Routledge
Husbandry to Housewifery: Women, Economic Change and Housework in Ireland, 1890-1914
Published in 1993 by Clarendon Press
It won the Ronald Tress Prize.
10-Minute Talks: Domestic and sexual violence during COVID-19
11 Nov 2020 Professor Joanna Bourke FBA
In this talk, Joanna Bourke outlines how the pandemic has exacerbated, not created, the problem of domestic and sexual violence in our society.
