Emily Allen
Director, H-Innovate
Editor, Honors in Practice
Professor, Department of English
Education
B.A. UCLA, M.A. UC Santa Barbara, Ph.D. UC Santa Barbara
Awards and Accolades
Kofmehl Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award, College of Liberal Arts, Purdue, 2025
College of Liberal Arts Outstanding Undergraduate Teacher, 2018
Inductee, Purdue’s “Book of Great Teachers,” 2008
English Department Nominee for College of Liberal Arts Award, Purdue, 2003
Member, Purdue University Teaching Academy, 2002
Teaching for Tomorrow Award, College of Liberal Arts, Purdue, 2002
Charles B. Murphy Award in Undergrad Teaching, Purdue, 2002
English Department Nominee for College of Liberal Arts Award, Purdue, 2001
Excellence in Teaching Award (Graduate), English Department, Purdue, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2008, 2013, 2016
Excellence in Teaching Award (Undergrad), English Department, Purdue, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2007, 2008
Excellence in Teaching Award, English Department, Purdue, 1998
Biography
Emily Allen is Director of H-Innovate, a course adaptation initiative that creates new, sustainable, and scalable honors experiences in high-demand courses across Purdue University West Lafayette and Indianapolis.
From 2012-2021, Dr. Allen served as the John Martinson Honors College’s first Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, in which position she oversaw the development of the college’s interdisciplinary courses, curriculum, and faculty; contributed to imagining its co-curricular structures; and helped set the vision and goals of Purdue’s first academic-residential college. From 2021-2025, Dr. Allen directed the JMHC's Blue Sky Teaching and Learning Laboratory, which focused on translating and scaling high-impact honors pedagogies to new contexts. To meet the increasing demand for new honors courses, the Blue Sky Lab developed H-Innovate, an initiative Dr. Allen continues to direct.
Dr. Allen is also Professor in the English Department, where she serves as Director of Undergraduate Studies. Her primary scholarly area is nineteenth-century British literature and culture, particularly the novel. She is the author of Theater Figures: The Production of the Nineteenth-Century British Novel (The Ohio State University Press) and Novel Poetry: The Shape of the Real and the Problem of Form (Oxford University Press). She a founding member of NAVSA, the North American Victorian Studies Association. Professor Allen received her B. A. (honors) from UCLA, and her M. A. (honors) and Ph. D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She held an Isaac Walton Killam Postdoctoral Fellowship at Dalhousie University in Canada before arriving at Purdue University. She was the Director of the College of Liberal Arts Honors Program from 2008-2012, when she joined the team building Purdue’s new honors college. The story of building the honors college is told in Forging the Future: A History of the John Martinson Honors College, 2013-2023, which Dr. Allen published with a team of honors undergraduates.
Emily Allen is editor of Honors in Practice (HIP), the pedagogical journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council. HIP publishes work on innovative practices and interdisciplinary honors pedagogy. In this role, Dr. Allen works with a team of JMHC honors students that serve as HIP editorial interns.
Professor Allen has received numerous awards for her teaching, including the Charles B. Murphy Award in Undergraduate Teaching, the College of Liberal Arts Outstanding Undergraduate Teacher Award, the Teaching for Tomorrow Award. She is a member of the Purdue University Teaching Academy, and her name appears in Purdue’s Book of Great Teachers.
Contact Info
HCRS 1081
765-494-9393
elallen@purdue.edu