About
My research explores how literature has engaged with science from the nineteenth century to the present, with a particular focus on drama, environmental thought, and North American literary cultures.
My first monograph is forthcoming in the Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine series. The book draws on extensive archival research to examine how evolutionary science and theories of heredity informed literary experimentation across fiction and drama, showing how theatre functioned as a crucial site for thinking through heredity at the turn of the twentieth century. It concentrates on four American writers: Henry James, W. E. B. Du Bois, Edith Wharton, and Elizabeth Robins and situates their lesser-known and canonical works within a transnational theatrical culture shaped by realist and naturalist drama (by figures such as Émile Zola, Henrik Ibsen, and George Bernard Shaw). Research from this project has appeared in journals and edited volumes including Modern Drama, The Cambridge Companion to Modernist Theatre, and Oxford Bibliographies in Victorian Literature.
My current research develops a broader interest in the environment. A major strand of this work, Imagining Alternative Arctics, rethinks literary writing about the Far North by foregrounding the work of Inuit writers, women, and writers of colour, and by examining the scientific and cultural institutions through which Arctic knowledge has circulated. This project has received support from the British Academy and forms the basis of ongoing collaborative research in environmental humanities. Related work extends these questions into other environmental and cultural contexts, including early-twentieth-century American folk drama and Native American cultures. Research in this area has been supported by fellowships at the Huntington Library and the British Library.
Alongside my research, I maintain an active interest in digital and public-facing humanities. Since 2018, I have been a core member and lead curator of LitHits, a digital reading project developed with Oxford University Innovations. LitHits introduces non-specialist readers to short literary works across periods and genres. The project is also the basis of a forthcoming anthology, The Ten Minute Book Club (Bodleian Publishing, 2026).
I am Director of the Literature and Science Hub Research Centre at the University of Liverpool, where I have been a Lecturer in English since 2023. I initially joined Liverpool as William Noble Research Fellow in 2021.
I welcome messages from prospective doctoral students interested in literature and science, environmental humanities, drama and performance, or related interdisciplinary approaches.