Sally Blackburn-Daniels

Sally Blackburn-Daniels joined Teesside University as a Research Fellow for Impact in September 2021 to support Teesside's Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Impact Acceleration Account. Sally is a member of the Leadership Team of the Institute for Collective Place Leadership. She has previously taught at the University of Liverpool and the University of Bolton, and has been a Postdoctoral Researcher and Impact Consultant for The Open University. Sally completed a degree in English Literature at the University of Manchester, and followed this with an MA in Victorian Literature and a PhD from the University of Liverpool. Sally's thesis focused on the intellectual history of late nineteenth- early twentieth- century writer, Vernon Lee, particularly Lee's engagement with scientific discourse. 

Sally's research connects people, place, and narrative through collaborative, co-produced methodologies.

Their place-based work includes projects such as Redcar Community Kitchen, the Place Based Policy Growth Initiative, and The Community Engineer, which explore how communities shape and are shaped by their environments.

Sally's narrative research encompasses both the reception and production of stories. In reception studies, they examine Victorian and fin-de-siècle literature through digital humanities methodologies, with particular focus on Vernon Lee's aesthetic philosophy, pacifism, and queer literary networks. They investigate how digital platforms—from scholarly hypertext editions to social media—are transforming both historical literary scholarship and contemporary reading cultures. Their paper 'On Links to Be: Exercises in Style #2', co-authored with Alessio Antonini and Francesca Benatti, won the Douglas Engelbart Best Paper Award at Hypertext 2020.

Sally also works on narrative production and storytelling through text and visual methods. Their research supporting frontline NHS healthcare workers through creative writing, developed with Open University colleagues, received a Bright Ideas in Health Award for 'Helping the NHS Workforce Recover from the COVID-19 Pandemic'. Sally's collaborative work with Antonia Liguori employs visual-based storytelling methods to support people in sharing their experiences. The IAA-supported Flippin' Pain through Storytelling project enabled a group of people living with chronic pain to share their experiences through digital storytelling. The Community Engineer project, working with Teesside's Mike McGrother, used documentary filmmaking as a reflective practice, allowing Mike to explore his own musicking. This work bridges traditional literary studies with innovative approaches to the therapeutic and community-building potential of narrative practices.