Biography

I am an NWCDTP AHRC-funded PhD student. I completed my BA (Hons) English Literature (2018) and MA English Literature (2019) at Bishop Grosseteste University, Lincoln. Before joining Keele in 2020, I worked at the University of Suffolk. Alongside my PhD, I am currently working as an Associate Research Consultant on the Collaboration Labs programme at the University of Manchester. This research project, in collaboration with Tate Liverpool, will provide the evidence base to shape the structure and implementation of an innovative volunteer programme.

Research and scholarship

My PhD project, provisionally titled ‘Life Writing and Lichfield Literary Culture, 1775-1835’, examines Samuel Johnson’s direct and indirect influence on his contemporaries, including those based in or associated with Lichfield, as an impetus for experimentation in biographical genres. The project will re-evaluate the group centred in Lichfield through a study of an under-examined collection of manuscripts and books at the Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum. I am particularly interested in women writer’s contributions to late Georgian life writing, and the thesis examines works by Hester Thrale Piozzi, Anna Seward, Mary Morris Knowles, Maria Edgeworth, and Frances Burney. Ultimately, the aims of this project are to explore how works and networks helped to transform biographical genre, attitudes to literary legacies, and textual editing in the period.

Publications

Stephen Copley Research Award, British Association for Romantic Studies (2021).