About
I am an Associate Professor in English, and Co-Director of Programmes for the Department.
I enjoy hearing from prospective students, so if you are interested in studying English literature at the University of Southampton, do get in touch. My areas of special interest are women's writing of the long eighteenth century (in both French and English), the novel, and the local author Jane Austen.
Research
Research groups
Research interests
- Eighteenth-century literature and culture
- Translation and reception history
- The cross-channel migration of ideas in the period 1780-1830
- European women writers, readers and salonnières
- Jane Austen and contemporary literature and culture
Current research
I am currently working on a collection of essays resulting from a major international conference hosted at the University of Southampton in July 2025, to celebrate Jane Austen's 250th birthday. Globalising Jane Austen: Transformations and Mediations, co-edited with Katie Halsey (Stirling) will be published by Bloomsbury in 2028.
My long-term projects link my research interests, and examines French and British women writers and translators in the 1750-1830 period. My work has been funded by the Bosack Kruger Foundation. From May 2019 to May 2020, I was funded by the Leverhulme Trust, via their fellowship programme.
Research projects
Completed projects
Publications
Teaching
My teaching is informed by my research. Alongside teaching British literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, I enjoy teaching French literature in translation, and thinking more broadly about the contemporary reception of texts, and eighteenth and nineteenth-century canon formation.
With my colleague Dr Kim Simpson, I designed a popular Futurelearn online course focussing on Jane Austen: Jane Austen: Myth, Reality and Global Celebrity.
My PhD students have worked on projects relating to women's writing and lives in the long eighteenth century, on coverture in the period, and on the cross-channel debate on education. I have co-supervised Creative Writing projects in the department. I have also examined PhD theses on Austen and contemporary culture, on Romantic-period cosmetics, on Helen Maria Williams and Aphra Behn and translation, and on salon culture more broadly.
I would be happy to supervise projects on any aspect of my research specialisms, and always enjoy hearing from prospective students.
External roles and responsibilities
Biography
I studied French and English at the University of Glasgow. My graduate work at the University of Oxford was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and by a Snell Exhibition at Balliol College.
I taught at several Oxford colleges, and at the Université Paris XII, before arriving in Southampton in 2005. I was initially appointed as postdoctoral research fellow at Chawton House Library in Chawton, near Alton - a centre for the study of the early women's writing. From 2007, I was responsible for the establishment of the Visiting Fellowship and conference programme. I was fully seconded as Executive Director of Chawton House from 2014-January 2019.