I am a historian of Britain in the world, with interests in utopianism, empire, and twentieth-century society and culture. From 2021 to 2024 I am a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, researching the experiences of white creole and British families in the twentieth-century Caribbean. This project investigates the lives of these groups in the Caribbean and their wider family histories, covering the last decades of the colonial period and the transition to independence.

Prior to this, I read History at the University of Cambridge, where I also completed my doctorate. My first book, ‘The Utopians: Six Attempts to Build the Perfect Society’ (Picador, 2021), tells the story of the wave of experimental communities that sprang up around the globe in the aftermath of the First World War. My second book, ‘Practical Utopia: The Many Lives of Dartington Hall’ (CUP, Modern British Histories Series, 2022), focuses on a single one of these communities, setting a far-reaching social and educational experiment in Devon within the wider context of international interwar reformism. A strong advocate for wider engagement with history, I have written popular history guides and visitors’ pamphlets and appeared on podcasts and on the radio.

 

KEY PUBLICATIONS

 Practical Utopia: The Many Lives of Dartington Hall (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Modern British History Series, 2022).

 The Utopians: Six Attempts to Build the Perfect Society (London: Picador, 2021).

 ‘The Politics of Community Drama in Interwar England’, Twentieth Century British History (2020).

‘Dartington Hall and the Quest for “Life in its Completeness”, 1925-1945’, History Workshop Journal (2019).