My current research unpacks the construction of the diagnosis ‘feeblemindedness’ using a relational gendered approach to two institutions (Napanoch State Institute for Mental Defective Delinquents and Bedford Hills Reformatory for Girls) that were both carceral and medical. I am exploring the pathologisation of bad behaviour and the criminalisation of (perceived) mental difference

I am interested in the construction of social categories and identities and the production of norms. My research sits between histories of disability, youth, gender, medicine, and the carceral.

I have had the pleasure of teaching on multiple units within the History Department at Bristol, including Approaching the Past and Gender in the Modern World, as well as teaching secondary school age students local to Bristol and nation wide as part of the university’s Widening Participation initiatives.