Dr Anne Karpf is Professor of Life Writing and Culture. A writer, sociologist and award-winning journalist, she teaches on the Creative, Digital and Professional Writing MA and is one of the organisers of the University's Centre for Life Writing and Oral History (CLiOH). She has a PhD in cultural studies.
Anne Karpf
Dr Anne Karpf is Professor of Life Writing and Culture. A writer, sociologist and award-winning journalist, she teaches on the Creative, Digital and Professional Writing MA and is one of the organisers of the University's Centre for Life Writing and Oral History (CLiOH). She has a PhD in cultural studies.
Her books include Doctoring the Media: The Reporting of Health and Medicine (Routledge) and The Human Voice: The Story of a Remarkable Talent (Bloomsbury; Bloomsbury USA; and translated into German, Japanese and French). How to Age was published in the UK by Pan Macmillan, in the US by Picador and has been translated into ten languages. She co-edited A Time to Speak Out: Independent Jewish Voices on Israel, Zionism and Jewish Identity (Verso). Her new book on women and the climate crisis, How Women Can Save the Planet (Hurst), was published in 2021.
Anne teaches creative nonfiction and research methods. She supervises postgraduates and PhD candidates.
Anne is an active researcher. Her wide research interests include gender and the climate crisis, life writing, the human voice, media history, Holocaust studies, psychoanalysis, representations of health and medicine and ageing.
She is a member of CLiOH, which she co-organises, and GDI (Global Diversities and Inequalities Centre).
Recent book chapters
Care by Design: Women, Change and the Climate Crisis. In: A. Fitz et al, eds. 2023. Yasmeen Lari: Architecture for the Future. Cambridge, MASS: MIT Press https://direct.mit.edu/books/book/5583/Yasmeen-LariArchitecture-for-the-Future
It Thought Me – on interviewing Marion Milner’. In: M. Boyle Spelman and J. Raphael-Leff, eds., 2022. The Marion Milner Tradition. London: Routledge https://www.routledge.com/The-Marion-Milner-Tradition-Lines-of-Development-Evolution-of-Theory-and-Practice-over-the-Decades/BoyleSpelman-Raphael-Leff/p/book/9781138359758?srsltid=AfmBOorF7PSYpoMMuQdv6mc37Sg_ffn4UA3jIUCB7kYbRByRsIPytbqf
Foreword, in Nicholas Chare and Dominic Williams, eds., 2019. Testimonies of Resistance: Representations of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Sonderkommando. Oxford: Berghahn Books https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/ChareTestimonies#toc
Beyond the consulting room: Winnicott the broadcaster in Angela Joyce, ed., 2018. Donald Winnicott and the History of the Present. London: Karnac https://squiggle-foundation.org/resources/books-book-reviews/donald-winnicott-the-history-of-the-present-new-publication/
Foreword, in Nicholas Chare and Dominic Williams, eds., 2019 (in press). Testimonies of Resistance: Representations of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Sonderkommando. Oxford: Berghahn Books.
‘Beyond the consulting room: Winnicott the broadcaster’ in Angela Joyce, ed., 2018. Donald Winnicott and the History of the Present. London: Karnac.
‘Recreating lives: the possibilities and limits of creative nonfiction’ in M. F. San Miguel and C-P. Neumann (eds.), 2018. Taking Stock to Look Ahead: Celebrating Forty Years of English Studies in Spain. Zaragoza: Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza.
‘The cancer memoir: in search of a writing cure?’ in Jonathan Burke, ed., 2013. The Topic of Cancer: New Perspectives on the Emotional Experience of Cancer. London: Karnac.
‘Chain of Testimony: The Holocaust Researcher as Surrogate Witness’ in Nicholas Chare and Dominic Williams, eds., 2013. Representing Auschwitz: At the Margins of Testimony. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
‘"C'est Bien Une Femme Qui Parle": Du Préjuge A L'Androgynie. La Voix Dans La Sphère Publique’, in Anne-Marie Bernon-Gerth et al (eds), 2012. Les Médias à l'Epreuve du Réel. Michel Houdiard Editeur.
Recent academic journal papers
'She Loved This Place': Memorial Benches as Death Writing, Life Writing and Life Siting., 2025. Life Writing, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/14484528.2024.2431552
‘Listen! The human voice as a neglected psycho-social research resource and topic’, Journal of Psycho-Social Studies, vol.11, Issue 2, October 2018. chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.psychosocial-studies-association.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Anne-Karpf-Listen-The-human-voice-as-neglected-psycho-social-research-topic-resource.pdf
Speaking Sex to Power? The Female Voice as a Dangerous Instrument, Imago. Studi di cinema e media. Ears Wide Open. Il paesaggio sonore negli studi di cinema e media, 14, 2017. pp. 27-36. ISSN 2038-5536. https://cdn.torrossa.com/en/resources/an/4237673
'The post-Holocaust memoir: 20 years after 50 years later', Mnemosyne, o la costruzione del senso (10), 2017. pp. 63-72. ISSN 978-2-87558-564-6. chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://repository.londonmet.ac.uk/1242/8/The%20post-Holocaust%20memoir%2020%20years%20after%2050%20years%20later%20pre-print%20corrected%20full%20version.pdf
‘Listen! The human voice as a neglected psycho-social research resource and topic’, Journal of Psycho-Social Studies, vol.11, Issue 2, October 2018.
‘Speaking Sex to Power? The Female Voice as a Dangerous Instrument’, Imago. Studi di cinema e media. Ears Wide Open. Il paesaggio sonore negli studi di cinema e media, 14, 2017. pp. 27-36. ISSN 2038-5536.
'The post-Holocaust memoir: 20 years after 50 years later', Mnemosyne, o la costruzione del senso (10), 2017. pp. 63-72. ISSN 978-2-87558-564-6.
‘Constructing and Addressing the “Ordinary Devoted Mother": Donald Winnicott's BBC broadcasts, 1943-62’, History Workshop Journal, issue 78, autumn 2014, 1477-4569.
‘The human voice and the texture of experience’, Oral History, autumn 2014, volume 42, issue 2, pp.50-55, ISSN 0 143 0955.
‘The pleasure of immersion: Some thoughts on how the Singing Detective sustains narrative’, Journal of Screenwriting, vol. 4, issue 3, August 2013, pp.59-73, ISSN 1759-7137.
‘The Sound of Home? Some Thoughts on How the Radio Voice Anchors, Contains and Sometimes Pierces’, The Radio Journal, vol. 11, no 1, April 2013, pp.309-315. ISSN 1476-4504.
Some recent broadcasts
'Thinking Allowed', BBC Radio 4, October 23, 2023, on memorial benches. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001rh59
‘The Right Pitch: Why women’s voices are deepening’, France 24 TV, September 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJSjU1NbGOE
‘Crossing the Age Divide’, BBC World Service, April 2018. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3cswkd0
‘From Donald Winnicott to the Naughty Step’, Archive on 4, BBC Radio 4, May 2013. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b01s7v7b
‘Spoken Like a Woman’, Archive on 4, BBC Radio 4, February 2013, repeated January 2018. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b01q7g6n
‘The Right Pitch: Why women’s voices are deepening’, France 24 TV, September 2018.
‘Crossing the Age Divide’, BBC World Service, April 2018.
‘Living Longer Lives: Blessing or Curse?’, BBC World Service, July 2017.
‘From Donald Winnicott to the Naughty Step’, Archive on 4, BBC Radio 4, May 2013.
‘Spoken Like a Woman’, Archive on 4, BBC Radio 4, February 2013, repeated January 2018.
Regular appearances on BBC World Service Weekend.
Some columns and features
Email: a.karpf@londonmet.ac.uk
Anne peer reviews for a range of publishers and publications.
Anne has lectured in the US, Switzerland, France, Sweden and Italy and has chaired many events. Her books have been translated into thirteen languages and serialised in The Times and Mail on Sunday.
