He is an emeritus professor in medieval French and Occitan literature at King's College, Cambridge, an emeritus fellow at King's College, and a former president of the Society for French Studies.
Burgwinkle studied at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, at Boston College, and at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris and completed his PhD entitled The Troubador as Subject: Biography, Erotics and Culture in 1988 at Stanford University.
He is a Professor in Medieval French and Occitan Literature at King's College, Cambridge.
His research focuses on vernacular literature, especially the Occitan troubadours, gender and queer theory, hagiography, and the history and travels of medieval manuscripts.
[2] In 2011, he became a knight of the Ordre des Palmes Académiques for his contributions to the dissemination of French culture through education.