I am Professor of Cultural History and Head of the School of Humanities at the University of Southampton. Before joining Southampton in 2024, I held senior academic and leadership positions at the University of Portsmouth, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the University of Exeter.
Following a BA in Geography at the University of Exeter, I completed a PhD in Geography and History at Royal Holloway, University of London, before going on to hold academic positions at the University of Oxford, Queen’s University Belfast and the University of Leicester. I have been fortunate to have had the opportunity to work in several multi-disciplinary settings, including the University of Exeter’s Cornwall Campus and the V&A Museum, and I now work with colleagues and students from a range of disciplines in our School of Humanities and across our wider Faculty of Arts and Humanities.
My research lies at the intersections of cultural history, historical and cultural geography, photography, visual culture and empire. My work explores the relationship between photography, geographical knowledge and colonialism, from the nineteenth century to the present, and I am particularly interested in the ways photography shapes understandings of place, landscape, identity and cultural difference. My scholarship aims to contribute to debates in the history of photography, historical and cultural geography and visual culture studies.
I am the author of Picturing Empire: Photography and the Visualisation of the British Empire, and Photography and Exploration, and co-editor of Picturing Place: Photography and the Geographical Imagination, New Spaces of Exploration, and Visible Mending.
Alongside research, I have led major interdisciplinary educational and research initiatives, including the V&A/RCA History of Design programme and the V&A's AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership programme. I have served on the AHRC Peer Review College and have secured external funding from organisations including the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy and other national and international funders. I am a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Geographical Society.
In my research and current leadership role as Head of Humanities I am committed to demonstrating the value of arts and humanities research in understanding the human experience and addressing contemporary social, cultural and environmental challenges.
