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Biography
I have a long-standing interest in Romanticism. My PhD explored Blake's use of the term 'self-annihilation' in his poetry: how it is a process that continually emerges from creative labour, and that brings together spiritual community through the imagination.
I have also performed poetry and song on local radio (BcFM Backchat), published poetry in the Landsdown Poet's Anthology (choir press), and performed at Sanctum, Apples and Snakes and poetry open-mics in Bristol and London.
Research interests
I work on radical literature of the 1790s, specifically on surveillance and the spy figure. I am currently writing a book on this subject, which is forthcoming with Edinburgh University Press in 2026. My doctoral degree was on the poetry of William Blake, and on the process of 'self-annihilation' through creative labour. I have a long-standing interest in radical Romanticisms, and on Gothic literature in the late 18th to early 19th centuries. I have written work on Blake and the Gothic, Blake and eighteenth-century theology, and edited a collection of essays on Doris Lessing. More details of these publications can be found on my Orcid profile. I run a research seminar series called Interdisciplinary Romanticisms, for Early-Career Researchers and Postgraduates. This group, which ran in 2023-4, and which will be relaunched in 2026, will bring together researchers in Romanticism from across the School of Humanities.
Projects and supervisions
Research projects
Spies, Suspicion and Sincerity in Radical Literature 1790-1803
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
Department of EnglishDates
01/09/2022 to 31/08/2024
Publications
Recent publications
01/01/2019"'Father, father where are you going?" Epicurean Deism and Absent Fathers in Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience'.
Journal of Literature and Theology (OUP)
'Blake's Gothic Humour: the spectacle of dissection'
William Blake's Gothic Imagination: Bodies of Horror
Teaching
MA Romantic Poetry and Poetics
MA Gothic
MA Introduction to Literary Research
Dissertation
Novel Territories: Eighteenth-Century Prose Fiction
Literature 1740-1900
Literature 1550-1740
Approaches to Poetry
Critical Issues