Research
My research focuses on nineteenth-century literature and medicine. I am interested in how writing shaped the development of medical practice during this period, in particular within the periodical press. My work centres on women in medicine, as both practitioners and patients.
My recent book, Writing Women's Madness, 1845-1914 (2025), demonstrates the importance of writing to psychiatric practice during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It explores the textuality of clinical literature and periodicals to show how their genre, form, language, and readership shaped the development of theories about the female mind.
My current project explores the periodical writing of early British female doctors, looking in particular at the journals which medical women founded for themselves. My project investigates how these journals aided female doctors in sharing medical knowledge, shaping clinical practice, and defining their identity in a profession which marginalised them. This research is funded by a Research Society for Victorian Periodicals Curran Fellowship. A preliminary study of the Magazine of the London School of Medicine for Women has been published in Humanities (Literature and Medicine Special Issue, 2024), exploring how the periodical established a sense of community amongst female doctors.
I am also currently completing a project looking at the early publications of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, and the women who wrote and edited them.