About.
I am Lecturer in History of Art/Liberal Arts at the University of Bristol, where I specialise in art and objects from the early modern period to the late nineteenth century. Previously, I was Postdoctoral Research Fellow in History at the University of Derby, a Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art Postdoctoral Fellow, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh’s Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, and a Visiting Lecturer in the University of Edinburgh’s History of Art department, where I received my PhD in 2016.
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My research focuses on the relationship between identity and visual and material culture in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain and North America, exploring this connection through work on the home, the collaged object, and the body.
My monograph, Domestic Space in Britain, 1750-1840: Materiality, Sociability and Emotion, c.1750-1840, is forthcoming with Bloomsbury Academic in 2021. It is the first book to explore the role of emotions and social relations in the material culture of the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century home. I have also published articles in the Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Aphra Behn Online: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830, Journal 18, and Eighteenth-Century Fiction, and I have co-edited a special issue of Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies on craft and masculinity. My research on collage made before 1900 informed the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art exhibition, Cut & Paste: 400 Years of Collage (2019), and features in a chapter in the exhibition’s award-nominated catalogue.
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I have held numerous short-term research fellowships at institutions like Yale Center for British Art, the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library, the Huntington Library, the Harry Ransom Center, the University of St Andrews, and the Library Company of Philadelphia. In the 2020-21 academic years, I will take up short term fellowships at the Wolfsonian Museum and the Australian Research Council Centre for Excellence in the History of the Emotions (University of Adelaide), and will undertake second short term fellowship at the Winterthur Museum.
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I have extensive experience in teaching and assessment at higher education level. I taught at undergraduate and postgraduate level within several departments of the University of Edinburgh from 2012-2019, and more recently, within the Department of Humanities at the University of Derby. I have particular expertise in teaching, leading, and developing modules on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century art, social and cultural history, and material culture.
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With Dr Madeleine Pelling I co-convene the New Directions in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Art digital seminar series, which aims to champion new scholarly voices working across visual and material cultures in this period. I also currently co-convene the Collage Research Network with Dr Cole Collins, which hosts a blog, newsletter, and events on the topic of collage. You can find out more about the network here.
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