Alan Burton is an experienced teacher and researcher of the British screen. He has taught at De Montfort University, the University of Hull and the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, and at Klagenfurt University in Austria. He is currently Honorary Visiting Research Fellow in History of Art and Film at the University of Leicester, Research Associate at the Cinema and Television History research centre at De Montfort University, and an advisor on cinema and television for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. He has published widely on the history of British cinema, including studies on left-political film, film directors and genre. His Historical Dictionary of British Cinema (Rowman & Littlefield, 2013, co-authored with Steve Chibnall) was Winner, Library Journal Best Reference of 2013 (US), and his Historical Dictionary of British Spy Fiction (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016) was Winner, Outstanding Reference Source, RUSA Committee, American Library Association, 2017. He is co-founder of the Journal of Popular British Cinema (1998-2003) and the Journal of British Cinema and Television (2004- ). In 2014, he was awarded a three-year, full-time research grant by the Austrian Science Fund for the project 'British Spy Fiction: Genre, History and Popular Culture'. Looking-Glass Wars: Spies on British Screens since 1960 is a major outcome of the grant award.
