Research output per year
Research output per year
Research activity per year
I am Associate Dean for Humanities Research, within the School of Creative Arts, and a Principal Lecturer in English Literature. I am also an Associate Director of the Doctoral College with responsibility for postgraduate research students in the discplines of Humanities, Engineering, Business and Law.
Research
My research and writing focuses primarily on literature of the early American republic and the antebellum United States, with further interests in Native American literature, ecocriticism and human-animal studies. I am the author of the York Notes Companion to Nineteenth Century American Literature.
Current projects focus on: civil unrest and the print culture of post-revolutionary New England; American historical fiction and Indian Removal in the 1820s and 1840s; the New Orleans pirate Jean Lafitte; and bears in American writing.
I have recently published a new critical edition, with notes and introduction, of Magdalen King-Hall's 1944 historical novel, Life and Death of the Wicked Lady Skelton (Hatfield: UH Press, 2016).
I delivered a series of talks about the novel and its links to the Hertfordshire legend of the 'Wicked Lady' highwaywoman at a number of free public events around the county from 2016-2019.
I would welcome applications and inquiries from students wishing to pursue postgraduate research on American literature, particularly colonial, early national, and nineteenth-century American literature; the American West; travel writing; indigenous writing; environmentalism and literature.
Background
I gained my undergraduate degree in English Language and Literature from Magdalen College, Oxford, before going on to gain an MA in Anglo-American Literary Relations and a PhD from University College, London. I joined the University of Hertfordshire in 2003. I have held a number of roles: Humanities Programme Tutor for four years; School Research Tutor for five years; American Studies co-ordinator for ten years; Acting Head of English Literature and Creative Writing; and Associate Dean Research for the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Education, prior to our merger with Creative Arts. From 2021-22 I was interim Dean of the School of Humanities.
Successful research student supervision:
PhD, Race, Politics and the Frontier in American Literature, 1783-1837, University College London (UCL)
1997 → 2002
Anglo-American Literary Relations, MA, University College London (UCL)
1996 → 1997
English Language and Literature, BA (Hons) / MA (Oxon), The University of Oxford
1992 → 1995
External examiner for American Studies, The University of Winchester
Sept 2014 → Aug 2018
Award External Examiner, University of Plymouth
Jun 2012 → Jun 2016
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Research output: Other contribution
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review