Rate My Professor Elizabeth Burns-Dans

Dr. Elizabeth Burns-Dans is a Lecturer in the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Murdoch University, specializing in the History section. She joined Murdoch University in 2023, marking her first teaching position following the completion of her MPhil and PhD at the University of Notre Dame Australia in Fremantle. Her MPhil thesis, titled 'The Dark Romanticism of Francisco de Goya,' was awarded in 2018. Burns-Dans's research engages with art history, theory, and criticism, particularly in medieval and Renaissance periods. She employs the History of Experience as a methodological approach to access and understand historical lived experiences through art, focusing on how artworks reveal the sensory and emotional worlds of their creators. Her work explores representations of unruly objects, such as cephalopods in early modern manuscript and print illustrations, tracing their classical and medieval inheritances into the early modern imagination. Prior to her current role, she contributed to projects including 'A History of the Architects Board of Western Australia, 1921-2021' with Alexandra Wallis and Deborah Gare, and 'The Art of Contested Histories: In Pursuit of Venus [Infected] and the Pacific Legacy' during her time at Notre Dame.

At Murdoch University, Burns-Dans teaches units such as HIS102: Empires and Modern History and HIS213: The Vikings, and has developed innovative courses like 'Art of Protest: The Music, Performance and Visual Arts of Activism since 1850,' integrating the Murdoch University Art Collection for hands-on curation and historical analysis. She presented 'Polypus in Print: The Reach of the Unruly Octopus in the Early Modern Imagination' with Dr. Alys Daroy at the AAANZ 2025 Conference 'Unruly Objects.' Burns-Dans serves as a committee member of the History Council of Western Australia for the 2023-24 term and delivered the 2024 Murdoch Lecture for the Melville Historical Society on art as a medium for historical restoration. She participated as an Into the Light 2023 researcher. Her contributions extend to public engagement through reflections on artworks like Arcimboldo's 'Flora 1566' and teaching in art galleries.