I am a specialist in literature and visual culture of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with particular interests in theories of secrecy, intelligibility, and gender.

Much of my work thinks about innovation, risk, or creativity in literature and art, and what this puts at stake. I am interested in the ways in which political, philosophical and technological advancements have initiated new forms of literary and artistic expression, and the extent to which modern institutions, networks and ideologies have shaped literary and visual perception. My first book, Abstraction in Post-War British Literature (2022)  explores the ways in which writers and thinkers responded to non-representational art in the decades following the Second World War, questioning how abstraction came to be discovered, absorbed and reimagined in literature. Many of my publications to date have been on women’s concrete and visual poetics, such as Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry (Timglaset, 2021). I also have an enduring relationship with the life and work of Christine Brooke-Rose (1923-2013), which has led me to edit and publish work on her writing, to run two conferences, one at the Royal College of Art (2013) featuring contributions from Ali Smith, Tom McCarthy, Brian Dillon, John Calder, and a centenary conference at University of Oxford in 2023 featuring keynote lectures by Jean-Michel Rabaté and Deborah Levy, and to oversee the Society celebrating her legacy. 

My current research explores two areas: the illegible in modern and contemporary poetry and art; the lives and creative work of women directly involved in, or witness to, the intelligence services. These new directions in my research engage more fully with experimentation in biography and life writing, autofiction, and creative non-fiction by women. I have published on these areas in collected volumes such as the recently published Gestures: A Body of Work (2025) and journals such as Modernism/Modernity+ and Modernist Cultures. 

Before coming to Bristol in 2022, I was a Lecturer in English at Durham University (2021-2022), and a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Edinburgh (2018-2021). With a background in both art schools and universities (Univeristy of Cambridge, BA; Royal College of Art, MA; University of Oxford, DPhil), I am interested in ideas concerning creative and critical ‘practice’ and ‘creative-critical’ approaches.  I have held visiting fellowships at the Yale Center for British Art, the Harry Ransom Center University of Texas, the Getty Research Institute, and the Henry Moore Institute.

I have published widely on writers such as Christine Brooke-Rose, J. G. Ballard, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Anna Kavan, Ann Quin, Ana Hatherly, Janet Malcolm, W. S. Graham, Herbert Read, Elizabeth Bowen, Valeria Luiselli, and artists such as Prunella Clough, Susan Hiller, Allen Jones, Ralph Rumney, Liliane Lijn, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, Germaine Richier, as well as more broadly on women’s concrete and visual poetics. I am a published literary and arts critic, authoring exhibition catalogue essays for institutions such as the Royal Academy of Art, the Institute of Contemporary Art, and Galeria Helga de Alvear, and for publications such as Frieze, Tate Etc., the Guardian, Bricks from the Kiln. My research has featured in the Guardian, Times Literary Supplement, and London Review of Books.

My professional experience in commissioning roles in poetry and contemporary artists’ book publishing, as well as for a number of arts and literary journals, also informs my thinking, on literary production and reception, and on women and the material text. Working alongside a wide range of women writers and artists, I’ve been prompted to consider how we use and investigate new media for publishing, and develop new forms of dissemination. I am a member of the Bristol Common Press Committee, supporting the work of this historical print shop and engaging in practice-led teaching.

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Opportunities 

I welcome applications for doctoral and postdoctoral work on modern and contemporary literature, and/or literature and visual cultures. I am currently supervising two PhD students, working on intermedial poetry and American fiction in the digital age. I would be happy to hear from postgraduate students wishing to pursue research in any of my areas of specialisation and interest: modern and contemporary poetry; the avant-garde and experimental forms; theories of invention and creativity; creative non-fiction; creative-critical; post-war British and American fiction; the material text; gender and sexuality; 20th-21st century women writers; theories of visuality; visual culture; visual arts; gestural abstraction and asemic writing; print and digital culture; studies in secrecy; histories of intelligence work and forms of surveillance; histories and theories of sensory overload.