Research Interests

I have worked on range of topics in nineteenth-century British and American art and visual culture, particularly in regard to gender and sexuality and to questions of visual racism. I also have an interest in theory and method.

Much of my current research concerns nineteenth-century Danish cultural history, particularly colonialism and the Danish empire, the movement of objects and Danish conceptions of nationhood, and relations between art and other cultural debates.

My research is connected to the departmental themes of Art and Empire and Space and Experience.

 

My most recent major research projects include:

Art Through Denmark

Art Through Denmark was collaborative project co-organised with Margit Thøfner (UEA), involving scholars from Denmark, the UK, and the US. It culminated in a special issue of Art History. Further details can be found here.

 

Sculpture Victorious

With Martina Droth (Yale) and Jason Edwards (York) I co-curated and co-edited the exhibition and publication Sculpture Victorious: Art in an Age of Invention, 1837-1901 (Yale Center for British Art, autumn 2014, Tate Britain, spring 2015). Much of the research was undertaken through an AHRC-funded project, Displaying Victorian Sculpture: Displaying Victorian Sculpture: AHRC funded project with the University of York and the Yale Center for British Art

Following Sculpture Victorious, Martina Droth and I undertook a collaborative project about Hiram Powers's The Greek Slave, resulting in the publication of a special issue of Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide:

NCAW | Volume 15, Issue 2 | Summer 2016

 

Victoria's Self-Fashioning: curating the royal image of dynasty, nation and empire

Victoria’s Self-Fashioning: curating the royal image for dynasty, nation and empire was a major research collaboration between the History of Art department and Historic Royal Palaces (Principal Investigator was Dr. Joanna Marschner, senior curator at Kensington Palace, and I was the Co-Investigator). Details of the project can be found here.