About

I am a Lecturer in English Literature. My research is concerned with environmental perception and writing about nature in the nineteenth century. I co-lead the 'Romantic Trees: The Literary Arboretum, 1740-1840' project, the interdisciplinary 'Tree Talks' seminar series, and Tree Cultures Network with Dr Amanda Blake Davis.

Research interests

My primary research is concerned with eighteenth and nineteenth-century literature and is engaged within the environmental humanities more broadly. I have a particular interest in the literary representations of trees and arboreal space, the 'Picturesque' writings of William Gilpin, the nineteenth-century novel, and nature and natural history writing.

My first monograph, Trees in Nineteenth-Century English Fiction: The Silvicultural Novel, was published in March 2021 with Routledge's Environmental Humanities Series. This is a book about a longstanding network of writers and writings that celebrate the aesthetic, socio-political, scientific, ecological, geographical, and historical value of trees and tree spaces in the landscape; and it is a study of the effect of this tree-writing upon the novel form in the long nineteenth century.

My current research project is focused on literary and cultural representations of trees, tree-planting, and arboreal caretaking in the English Lake District. Using long nineteenth-century Lakeland literature (Wordsworth, Martineau, Ruskin, and Potter) and contemporary place writing (Rebanks and Monbiot) that explores the planting, transplanting, and caretaking of trees as its focus, this is the first environmental humanities study to explore the tensions and intersections surrounding arboreal specimens and spaces in this agropastoral region. In doing so, this work responds to the pressing political and environmental need to balance tree-planting (for biodiversity and flood defences) alongside agricultural practices and traditions.

I am also a co-lead on the forthcoming project 'Romantic Trees: The Literary Arboretum, 1740-1840' with my colleague, Dr Amanda Blake Davis.

Recent publications

• 'Planting for “posterity”: Wordsworthian tree planting in the English Lake District', Nineteenth-Century Contexts, 46.4 (2024), 513-26
• '"Tree Mountaineers": Arboreal Materiality on the Fells in the Lakeland Guides of William Wordsworth and Harriet Martineau', Green Letters, 26.4 (2023), 412-24
• Trees in Nineteenth-Century English Fiction: The Silvicultural Novel (Routledge Environmental Humanities Series, 2021)

Membership of professional bodies

• Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (UK and Ireland) (ASLE-UKI)
• British Society for Literature and Science (BSLS)
• British Association for Romantic Studies (BARS)
• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA)

Qualifications

• BA (Hons) in English, University of Liverpool
• MA in Victorian Literature, University of Liverpool
• PhD, University of Liverpool

Recent conferences

• Invited to give a lecture on 'John Ruskin, ​Beatrix Potter, ​and ​Tree Cultivation ​in the ​English Lake District' at The Armitt Museum, Ambleside (August 2024)
• Invited to give a key-note lecture on 'Reading Trees in The Woodlanders', for the Thomas Hardy Society Conference, Dorchester (August 2024)
• Co-organised 'Tree Cultures at Kew', RBG Kew, London (July 2024)
• Co-organised 'The Literary Arboretum', Wordworth Grasmere (July 2024)

Teaching responsibilities

• First Year: Mutants and Monsters: Interpreting Fantasy
• Third Year: Tragedy
• MA: Enlightenment: Ferment of Ideas
• MA: Environmental History: Nature, Landscape and Society
• MA: Wilderness and the Imagination