My research interests are in early modern print culture, particularly cheap print. My initial research into prose murder pamphlets of the period is developing to encompass prison literature: writing from and about the early modern prison, with a concentration on the depiction of penitence. I am currently working on two projects based in Shakespeare’s plays: one is on the significance of kneeling and supplication, and the other is the development of a modern liturgy based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
I have an abiding interest in lifelong learning and am a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, UK. I have also 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).
My role in College
I am Tutor for Admissions for English and allied Joint Schools and Joint Director of Studies for BA (Hons) in Classics and English, and I direct the Visiting Student Programme, organising and co-ordinating academic programmes for students from North America and Europe who come to Oxford for one, two or three terms. I am fully committed to showing people from all sorts of backgrounds and with all levels of experience that studying at Oxford may be within their reach and am involved in Access and Outreach activities at Regent’s and in the wider University.
I teach Early Modern literature (1550-1760) to undergraduates in English Language and Literature, Classics and English, and History and English, and some part-time students studying at Oxford University’s Department for Continuing Education. I am co-convenor for MSt in Women’s Studies and teach and supervise postgraduates on this interdisciplinary Masters, running an option course on ‘Early “Feminisms”’. I am also a tutor on the part-time, interdisciplinary MSt in Literature and Arts, run by the Department of Continuing Education.
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Selected Publications
Books
- Ed. with E. Clarke, Special Issue: Still Kissing the Rod, Women's Writing 14.2 (2007)
Articles and Research Papers
- '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