Biography
I joined King’s in 2013 after studying at Oxford University, and teaching at Oxford, Oxford Brookes University and the University of Leicester.
I was a James M Osborn Visiting Fellow in English Literature and History at Yale University’s Beinecke Library in 2010, a Visiting Fellow at Chawton House Library in 2011, an International Visiting Research Fellow at Massey University, New Zealand, in 2012 and a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow 2013-15.
I write regularly for the Times Literary Supplement.
Research Interests
- Early modern women’s writing
- Poetic form
- Early modern literary criticism
- Sonnets: early modern and contemporary
I am interested in the intersections between literary form, history, and gender. My first monograph, Forms of Engagement: Women, Poetry, and Culture 1640-1680 (OUP, 2013) explored how 17th century women poets’ uses of different poetic forms drew from the culture around them.
My current book project, The Sex of Style: Literary Criticism and Gender in Early Modern England, examines how key concepts of poetic style such as originality, regularity and smoothness are gendered.
I am supervising PhD projects on Cowley, Donne, sonnets, and early modern rhetorical theory and would welcome PhD applications in any of my areas of research: early modern women’s writing, poetic form, early modern literary theory, early modern and contemporary sonnets.
For more details, please see my full research profile.
Teaching
I teach undergraduate modules on political poetry, sonnets and poetic movements from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. My teaching often incorporates critical creative writing assessments, museum visits and – at MA level – working with manuscript and early printed texts.
Expertise and Public Engagement
Marking the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, I commissioned and co-edited (with Hannah Crawforth) On Shakespeare’s Sonnets: A Poets’ Celebration, a collection of 30 new poems responding to Shakespeare. Several of the poems were recorded by the Poetry Archive, or featured in Poems on the Underground. The collection was covered in the UK’s major newspapers, broadcasters, literary festivals and in the media from the UK to Asia.