Amber Leigh Bourke

I am a doctoral researcher whose work explores the intersections of Classical Reception, Global Intellectual History, Enslavement Scholarship and Histories of Oppression. My thesis, A Global Helot Revolt: Spartan Receptions and the Politics of Duress, marks the first systematic attempt to examine the afterlife of the Spartan Helot beyond antiquity. I emphasise the enduring role of antiquity in shaping global political and academic thought, highlighting the power of metaphor and historical analogy in structuring both elite and subaltern discourses of freedom, coercion, and resistance.

My research is supervised by Dr Milinda Banerjee and Dr Derek Patrick and focuses on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As a Global History, my thesis covers an extensive geographical area, from centres of the European Enlightenment to the peripheries of revolution in Ireland, India and Haiti.

My academic interests include Classical Reception, Renaissance Humanism, Enlightenment Philosophy, Eighteenth-century Revolutions and the History of Slavery. I am particularly interested in the reappraisal of these topics within Global Intellectual History and Postcolonial Discourse

Outside of History, I am passionate about Widening Access initiatives within the university, as well as Equality, Diversity and Inclusion policy-making. I am also a Specialist Learning Disabilities Tutor with Randstad.

2024-2025- Graduate Teaching Assistant, MO2008 Scotland, Britain and Empire 1700-2000

2025-2026- Graduate Teaching Assistant, MO1007 The Early Modern Western World 1450-1770