Laura Ludtke

Until I left primary school, I did not realise that not all children were educated bilingually in French and English. Growing up in Red Deer, Alberta, Canada, I had the good fortune to be enrolled in the French Immersion Programme, studying all my subjects (including "Anglais" until grade 9) in French, and I graduated with a Bilingual Certificate and a deep love for learning languages. I directed this love in first two degrees in Classics (from the University of British Columbia and Queen's University, Canada, respectively) to learning Latin and Ancient Greek. My research specialised in Latin love poetry and I picked up some Italian and German along the way. Subsequently, I changed fields to study English Literature, and received a further BA and MA from Queen's University in 2010 and 2011 before completing a D.Phil. in English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford. My doctoral research, The Literary Lightscape of London, 1880 to 1950, considered literary and cultural responses to the electrification of London in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. My research continues to explore the intersection between modernity, technology, gender, and aesthetics in the city and is interested in questions of continuity and discontinuity in the twentieth century, which manifest in conflicts between generations of authors, movements, and genres, or as intersections, where the past and present engage with one another. I investigate issues related to interdisciplinary education and research are something in my podcast  LitSciPod: The Literature and Science Podcast, which I co-host with Dr Catherine Charlwood.

Before joining the Creative Multilingualism programme in March 2020, I was a member of the admissions and outreach team at Magdalen College (2018–2020) and taught in the Department of English at Queen's University (201-20516, 2018).