My research interests are in early modern print culture, particularly cheap print. My initial research into prose murder pamphlets of the period has developed to encompass prison literature: writing from and about the early modern prison, with a concentration on the depiction of penitence. Currently, I’m using my expertise in early modern literary history and culture to work on a book about Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall Trilogy.
I teach Early Modern literature to undergraduates in English Language and Literature, Classics and English, and History and English. I’ve an abiding interest in liflelong learning and teach part-time undergraduate and postgraduate courses at Oxford University’s Department for Continuing Education (OUDCE), as well as supervising part-time doctoral students. I want to show people that the joys and benefits of studying at Oxford may be within their reach, so I teach summer schools to adult learners, and have done public events for the Oxford Preservation Trust and the Oxford Festival of Arts.
I am a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, UK, and an Honorary Academic Associate of OUDCE. I have been honoured to receive several University awards, including ‘Most Acclaimed Lecturer in the Humanities’ (Oxford University Student Union, 2013), a Teaching Excellence Award (Oxford University, 2015), and ‘Outstanding Pastoral Support’ (Oxford University Student Union, 2016).
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Selected Publications
Books
- ‘O this dark dungeon!’: murderers, martyrs and the ‘sacred space’ of the early modern prison', in E. Clarke and R.W. Daniel (eds), People and Piety: Protestant Devotional Identities in Early Modern England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020), 135-150.
- Ed. with E. Clarke, Special Issue: Still Kissing the Rod, Women's Writing 14.2 (2007)
Articles and Research Papers
- ‘Elizabeth Caldwell.’ Patricia Pender and Rosalind Smith (eds). Palgrave Encyclopedia of Early Modern Women’s Writing. (Cham: Palgrave MacMillan, 2020-2023)
- Section Editor in John Nichols’s, The Progresses, Processions and Magnificent Festivities of Elizabeth I. John Nichols Project. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).
- 'Henry Goodcole', The Literary Encyclopedia (2011)
- '"We’ll build in sonnets pretty rooms": early modern literary studies, the "spatial turn" and ecocriticism', Literature Compass 7.12 (2010), pp. 1062-76
- 'Infanticide in Early Modern Europe and China' and 'Early Modern Contraception and Abortion', in V. L. Mondelli and C. A. Gotteslebened., The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Love, Courtship and Sexuality, 3. The Early Modern Period (Westport CN: Greenwood, 2008)
- '"Now Farewell to the Lawe, too long have I been in thy Subjection": Early Modern Murder, Calvinism and Female Spiritual Authority', Literature and Theology 22.3 (2008), pp. 295-312
- '"The Bloody Papist": Murder, Papists and Propaganda in Early Modern Prose Murder Pamphlets', Renaissance Journal 2 (2004), pp. 3-16