I have been at King's since 2000, having previously been a lecturer at Roehampton University. While at King's I have been Head of Department, Deputy Head (twice) and taken on a wide administrative posts including Director of Graduate Studies. I was one of the co-founders of the Queer@King's research group and continue to be an active member of the group. I am one of the founding co-editors of the journal Media History. I have held various research fellowships including the Belcher Fellowship at St. Hugh's, Oxford and was recently a Senior Visiting Scholar at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. I was a Co-I on the AHRC-funded 'Nineteenth Century Serials Edition' and have been a visiting fellow on international research projects including the DFG-funded 'Journallitteratur'.

Research interests and PhD supervision

I have two primary areas of research interest: the relationship between literature, media and culture since the 19th century, and Anglo-American queer studies. I have published widely on various aspects of literature, journalism, photography, film, painting and popular culture. Major publications include two monographs -- Trollope and the Magazines (2000) and Backward Glances (2003) and the two-volumed edition (co-edited with John Stokes, 2013) of Wilde's journalism for OUP's collected works series. I have co-edited essay collections on Anthony Trollope, George Eliot and the Sunday newspaper, The News of the World. I am an actively engaged with colleagues working in the 19th century and in the queer studies research group Queer@King’s. Current research includes: the idea of 'compressive aesthetics' and the relation between print and the digital; the American artist Forrest Bess and his gallerist Betty Parsons; Derek Jarman and the ideas of queer magic. I have written a number of catalogue essays for artists including Edward Hopper, Alice Attie, Alan Shields and Forrest Bess.

I have supervised around 20 PhD students (and second supervised many more) on a range of topics including: 19th Century Science Fiction and Periodicals; Arthur Symons and the 1890s; AIDS writing; David Wojnarowicz; JG Ballard; the queer rural environments; Victorian empire writing; John Waters and William Burroughs. I have been external examiner for more than 30 doctoral theses, in the UK, USA and Europe.

For more details, please see my full research profile.

Teaching

My teaching is focused on 19th and 20th century literature and culture, often with an interdisciplinary emphasis that brings literature into conversation with visual cultures. I convene modules that cover that late 19th century and the works of Oscar Wilde, contemporary queer culture, and the idea of speed and acceleration. My teaching is research-led and I make an effort to incorporate material I am working on so that students get a sense of the questions that interest me and that I hope might also interest them.

Expertise and public engagement

I was curator of the exhibition, 'Derek Jarman: Pandemonium,' in the Somerset House Inigo Rooms in 2014, connected to the year-long project 'Jarman 2014' which spanned institutions across London. For the exhibition I did interviews for radio and the press (Mail on Sunday, FT Weekend and others). I have written programme notes for the NFT, introduced films at the BFI, and given public talks in galleries and museums in the UK, USA and Europe. As an associate of KCL's Cultural Institute, I helped to spearhead and shape projects with cultural institutions including the Young Vic, Royal Opera House, V&A and British Library.

Selected publications

• ‘”Collect and Simplify”: Serial Miscellaneity and Extraction in the Early Nineteenth Century,’ in British Writers, Popular Literature and New Media Innovation, 1820–45, ed. Alexis Easley (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2024), 19-39.
• ‘Seriality, Miscellaneity and Compression in 19th Century Print,’ Victorian Studies 62:2 (2020), 283-94.
• co-editor, with John Stokes, The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, vol. VI and VII: Journalism I and II (2 vols, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)
• Backward Glances: Cruising the Queer Streets of New York and London (London: Reaktion, 2003; distributed by Univ of Chicago Press.)
• Trollope and the Magazines: Gendered Issues in Mid-Victorian Britain (Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan Press/St Martin’s Press, 2000)