Joe Andrew (academic)

Joe Andrew (born Joseph Matthew Andrew, 1 June 1948) is a British academic whose main research interests are 19th-century Russian literature, feminist approaches to literature, and women writers.

Andrew is Professor of Russian Literature at Keele University.

His publishing history includes 24 books (monographs, single authored research translations, single edited books, co-edited books, and co-translated books), 61 articles (single authored articles in refereed journals, single authored chapters in books, and co-authored chapters in books), 57 translations, and 58 reviews.

Joe Andrew was born in Derby, where he attended Bemrose School.

He came from a non-intellectual, Roman Catholic, middle-class family.

He won a Scholarship to study at University College, Oxford, and, in 1969, he was awarded a First-Class Honours degree in Modern languages.

Joe Andrew, and his departmental colleague Chris Pike, began organising the Neo-Formalist Circle from Keele University in the mid-1970s.

In 1971, whilst researching the history of the Russian literary language at Wolfson College, Oxford, Andrew joined the recently formed 'Neo-Formalist Circle'.

His membership of the Circle, and his interest in Russian formalism, has continued to the present- day.

Joe Andrew was appointed Lecturer in Russian Studies at Keele University 1972.

This led to a "considerable consolidation of the Neo-Formalist Circle, to the extent that it is now very much a fixture on the British and international academic scenes" The Circle's twice-a-year journal 'Essays in Poetics' first appeared in April 1976 and was edited by Andrew and Pike.

From 1983 to 1991 he was on the voluntary Board of Management for Potteries Housing Association (a special needs housing charity which ran an emergency direct-access hostel in Hanley).

He was a member of the North Staffs Homelessness Forum, the North Staffs Review Team for the Closure of DHSS Resettlement Units and the National Advisory Steering Group for the Closure of DHSS Resettlement Units.

He served as vice-chair (1986–89) and Chair (1989–92) of North Staffs Standing Conference on Homelessness.

From 1987 to 2006, Andrew also served as the Chair of Committee of Resettlement Project North Staffs (which later became 'ARCH North Staffs), a Charitable organisation providing a range of services to vulnerable people.

Andrew rediscovered his Catholicism after meeting his wife.

He is a committed campaigner for CAFOD and an active lay Catholic.

He and his wife Barbara live in Hartshill, Stoke-on-Trent.

In 2022, he appeared on the BBC Two quiz show, Mastermind.

He became a Senior Lecturer in 1989 and Reader in 1993.

In 1990, Robert Reid replaced Pike as both the Circle's co-chair and the journal's joint editor.

In 1995, he was elevated to Professor.

Andrew's teaching has included courses on Anton Chekhov, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nikolai Gogol, Mikhail Lermontov, Alexander Pushkin, Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Turgenev and women in Russian literature.

He has delivered 70 invited lectures & conference papers all around the world.

Andrew remained Chair and joint editor until 2006.

During Andrew's leadership of the Neo-Formalist Circle it has organised several special conferences, on literary figures such as Chekhov, Gogol, Platonov and Pushkin.

These conferences have led to the publication of a number of edited volumes.

Until recently, Joe Andrew has had a long history of involvement in Voluntary sector organisations set up to tackle Homelessness in North Staffordshire.