Research

My research investigates how artistic forms can reproduce or recalibrate cultural meanings across time and space, and asks what effects this can have on the world that we live in. I am currently writing my second book, which addresses dynamic interrelations between forms of representation and infrastructural processes, focussing particularly on the built spaces, labour and operations of docks. More than conceiving infrastructures and the arts as mutually informing phenomena, the book argues that representation (particularly in performance) determined the forms and functions of historical infrastructural assemblages on both practical and imaginative levels. Further, it asks what the repercussions of these interrelations were on how infrastructures organised and mediated interactions between spaces and social worlds.

Alongside this major project, I maintain long-term interests in popular nineteenth-century theatre, Charles Dickens, adaptation, and practice-led research. I would be happy to receive applications for PhDs in nineteenth-century literature and culture.

Publications

MONOGRAPH:

·Dickens and Demolition: Literary Afterlives and Mid-Nineteenth-Century Urban Development. Edinburgh University Press, 2018.

CRITICAL EDITIONS:

·The Plays of Charles Dickens, co-edited with Peter Orford. Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming 2025.

·Sensation Drama, 1860—1880: An Anthology, co-edited with Beth Palmer. Edinburgh University Press, 2019.

JOURNAL SPECIAL ISSUES:

·Nineteenth Century Infrastructures, co-edited with Nicola Kirkby. 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century, no. 35, 2023.

·Nineteenth Century Interstitial Spaces, co-edited with Frederik Van Dam and Chris Louttitt. European Journal of English Studies, vol. 27, no. 2, 2023.

ARTICLES:

·“Repertoire.” Victorian Literature and Culture, vol. 51, no. 3, 2023, pp. 495–99.

·“Adaptable Near and Far: C. H. Hazlewood’s Double Adaptations.” Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film, vol. 48, no. 1, 2021, pp. 6-29.

·‘“Twin sisters:’ Intermediality and Sensation in Wilkie Collins’s The New Magdalen,” with Beth Palmer. Nineteenth-Century Contexts, vol. 42, no. 1, Feb. 2020, pp. 1–15.

·“Staging The Frozen Deep as Practice-led Research: ‘Illusion can only be perfected through the feelings.”’ Dickens Quarterly, vol. 36, no. 4, Dec. 2019, pp. 329–346.

·“‘kaleidoscopes of changing pictures:’ Representing Local and Foreign Geographies in Toy Theatres.” Journal of Victorian Culture, vol. 23, no. 1, 2018, pp. 45–63.

·“Is He a Dramatist?Or, Something Singular! Staging Dickensian Drama as Practice-Led Research,” with Oskar Cox Jensen and Emma Whipday. Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film, vol.43, no. 2, 2017, pp. 160–182.

·“Digitalizing Dickens: Adapting Dickens for the Bicentenary.” Dickens Quarterly, vol. 31, no. 1, Mar. 2014, pp. 42–62.

BOOK CHAPTERS:

·“Bleak House.” The Palgrave Encyclopaedia of Urban Literary Studies, edited by Jeremy Tambling, Palgrave-Macmillan and Springer, 2021, pp. 250-259.

·“‘Once upon a time would not prove to be All-time or even a long time.’ From Sanitary Reform to Cultural Memory: The Case of Jacob’s Island.” Dickens After Dickens, edited by Emily Bell, White Rose Press, 2020, pp. 15–34.