Reader
School of Humanities & Educational Studies
I am a Reader in Cultural History. I teach across all three levels of study on BA History, on the MA in Modern History, and supervise research students.
I am a specialist in Cultural History, with a particular focus on Comics Studies, Horror Studies, science fiction, and superheroes. Within these areas, I am interested in histories of gender, race, and sexuality, and explore these in my teaching and research. My specialisms lie in twentieth century American history, with concentrations on the Cold War and interwar periods.
I teach both skills and content-led modules. In my time at CCCU, this has included: the Cold War; superheroes from 1938 to the present; the US from 1900-1945; Atlantic History from 1776-1900; Cold War cinema; Utopian thought; histories of horror. I have supervised postgraduate research students at MRes and PhD level and have also served as an internal examiner.
My recent research has focused on histories of the Gothic and the weird, with forthcoming publications on topics such as American weird fiction in the context of empire in the Caribbean, and David Bowie and the attempted education of normative desire in the 1980s. I am also interested in fandom and the structures that are generated around texts; my forthcoming co-edited volume on Joss Whedon explores some of these issues. I have written widely about gender, national identity, and trauma in comics, film, literature, and TV.
I was co-convenor of the Oxford Comics Network, based at the University of Oxford, from 2018-2021. I am a Senior Fellow of the HEA and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. I am on the editorial board of Studies in Comics and the Journal of Graphic Novels & Comics and have reviewed articles and manuscripts for a number of other journals and publishers. I have also externally examined postgraduate research projects in my areas of expertise.