- Centre for Science and Imagination
- Literary Studies
About me
I began teaching at Westminster in 2007 and I am now Senor Lecturer in English Literature in the School of Humanities. I am module leader for the BA second year English Literature Tutorials and for the first year Poetry and Politics module. I also teach on the Nineteenth Century module.
I was educated at Birkbeck College, University of London (MA in Victorian Studies, 2001, and PhD in English, 2006), and at the University of Northampton (BA Hons in English Literature & History of Art, 2000). My main research interests are in literature and science, with a particular focus on poetry and geology in the late eighteenth and nineteenth century.
I am also Reviews Editor for the online, open-access Journal of Literature and Science.
Teaching
I have been teaching since 2003 and have been an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy since 2008.
Before coming to Westminster I taught on a range of modules for the School of English and Humanities at Birkbeck College, University of London, covering a variety of subjects including English literature, the history of art and visual culture. I have also taught history of art on the BA Fine Arts programme at the University of Northampton. Although I have been involved with modules focusing on a variety of literary periods, my specialist teaching areas are Romantic and Victorian literature, poetry, literature and science and nineteenth-century art.
Research
I have research interests in late eighteenth and nineteenth-century literature and cultural history, Romantic and Victorian poetry, exchanges between literature, science and politics, and specifically the relationship between poetry and geology and language theory. I also have interests in Bakhtinian critical theory and nineteenth-century art and visual culture.
I have published articles on Tennyson's poetry and geology and a book on Tennyson's poetry in relationship to geology and palaeontology I have also published on Shelley's poetry and geological theory in the journal, Romanticism. I am a member of the British Society for Literature and Science and the British Association of Victorian Studies.
I am currently Reviews Editor for the online, open-access Journal of Literature and Science. The JLS is dedicated to the publication of academic articles on the subject of literature and science and also reviews an eclectic range of scholarly articles published in the last eighteen months and at the cutting edge of current research on literature and science.
My wider research interests are concerned with the relationship between literature, geological theory, politics and philosophy. I am interested in a number of ideas: the ways in which new theories in geology offered writers models for imagining historical change and political progress; the influence emerging methods in geology had on the development of theories of language in the nineteenth century, and, more broadly, the complex interplay between poetic language and scientific/geological writing.
Publications
For details of all my research outputs, visit my WestminsterResearch profile.