Karen Burns (academic) facts for kids

Karen Burns (born in 1962) is an Australian expert who studies the history and ideas behind architecture. She teaches architecture at the University of Melbourne. She is known for her work on how buildings are designed and how they connect to history and society.

Early Life and Learning

Karen Burns was born in January 1962 and grew up in Beaumaris, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia. Even when she was young, she cared about helping others. In 1978, she volunteered at a new place that helped women and children who needed a safe home. This was an early sign of her passion for social justice.

She studied English literature and art history at Monash University. She earned her first degree in 1984 and a master's degree in 1987. In 1986, she started studying architecture at RMIT University. She also became an editor for a magazine called Transition that same year. Later, in 1999, she finished her PhD, which was a very advanced degree, at the University of Melbourne. Her PhD looked at how people traveled and saw cities in the 1850s.

Teaching and Research

Karen Burns has taught at several universities in Melbourne. She started her teaching career at RMIT University from 1986 to 1995. Then she taught at the University of Melbourne and later at the Victorian College of the Arts. In 2008, she joined the architecture department at Monash University. Today, she is a Senior Lecturer in Architecture at the Melbourne School of Design, which is part of the University of Melbourne.

Her research focuses on a few main areas:

• Australian Homes: She studies early homes built in Australia and how to understand their history.
• Women in Architecture: She looks at the history and ideas of women in architecture from the late 1900s.
• British Design: She explores how architects, artists, and manufacturers worked together in Britain in the mid-1800s. She is writing a book about this topic called Object Lessons: Demonstrating Victorian Design Reform, 1835–1870.

Karen Burns was also a key researcher for a big project about fairness and diversity in Australian architecture. This project, which ran from 2011 to 2014, looked at women, work, and leadership in the field. A major result of this project was the creation of Parlour: women, equity, architecture. Karen Burns helped start this group and even came up with its name. This shows her long-standing commitment to helping women and promoting fairness in architecture.

She has given important talks at many conferences around the world. She shares her research and is an active member of the academic community.

Helping Others and Public Work

Karen Burns has a long history of working for women's rights and social fairness in architecture.

E1027: Women in Architecture

In 1990, she helped create a group in Melbourne called E1027: Women in Architecture. This group, started with Harriet Edquist and others, had 80 members by 1991. It included many talented women architects and artists.

Insight Out Exhibition

In 1991, Karen Burns helped organize an art show called Insight Out with Anna Horne. This exhibition featured architectural art in different places around Fitzroy, Melbourne. It explored how cities change, how neighborhoods become more expensive, and how we remember history.

Parlour: Women, Equity, Architecture

In 2013, Karen Burns played a big part in starting Parlour: women, equity, architecture. She worked with Justine Clark and Naomi Stead to create this important platform. Parlour is a "space to speak" for women in architecture. It offers research, helpful information, and expert opinions about gender fairness in the field.

Karen Burns has written several articles for Parlour, including:

• "Who Wants to be a Woman Architect?"
• "The Elephant in our Parlour: Everyday Sexism in Architecture"
• "Why Do Women Leave?"

Parlour also hosted a big event in 2012 called "Transform: Altering the Future of Architecture." Karen Burns helped organize this event with her colleagues.

Selected Writings

Karen Burns has written many articles and chapters in books. Here are some examples of her work:

• Karen Burns and Lori Brown. ""Telling Transnational Histories of Women in Architecture, 1960–2015". Architectural Histories, 2020.
• Karen Burns. "Anthologizing Post-Structuralism: Architecture, Écriture, Gender, and Subjectivity". The Figure of Knowledge Conditioning Architectural Theory 1960s - 1990s, 2020.
• Karen Burns. "Time and Telegraphy: Nineteenth-Century Contexts for Stained Glass". 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century, 2020.
• Karen Burns, "Between the Walls: remembering colonial frontier space at Purrumbete, 1901 – 02" in Interspaces: Art + Architectural Exchanges from East to West, 2012.
• Karen Burns, "The Woman/Architect Distinction", Architectural Theory Review, 2012.
• Karen Burns, "A Girl’s Own Adventure: gender in the contemporary architectural theory anthology", Journal of Architectural Education, 2012.
• Karen Burns, "Frontier conflict, contact, exchange: re-imagining colonial architecture", Proceedings of the 27th International Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand (SAHANZ) Conference, 2012.
• Karen Burns, "Ex libris: archaeologies of feminism, architecture and deconstruction", Architectural Theory Review, 2010.
• Karen Burns, "The Grammar of Ornament: A Pacific Tale", Proceedings of the 26th International Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand (SAHANZ) Conference, 2009.
• Karen Burns, "The Afterlife of an Architectural Event", Assemblage, 2001.
• Karen Burns, "A House For Josephine Baker", in Postcolonial Space(s), 1997.
• Karen Burns, "Topographies of Tourism: 'Documentary' Photography and The Stones of Venice", Assemblage, 1997.
• Karen Burns, "Architecture/Discipline/Bondage" in Desiring Practices: Architecture, Gender and the Interdisciplinary, 1996.

Exhibitions Curated

Karen Burns has also helped organize several art and architecture exhibitions:

• 1991 Insight Out, at 200 Gertrude Street and other outdoor spots in Fitzroy – with Anna Horne.
• 1991 Diologhi per una possibile Utopia, in Cuneo and Turin, Italy – with Harriet Edquist and Mauro Baracco.
• 1991 Companion City, at ACCA (Australian Centre of Contemporary Art) – with Harriet Edquist.
• 1989 Robin Boyd: The Architect as Critic, at the State Library of Victoria – with Harriet Edquist, Philip Goad and Dean Cass.