Research Interests

I am a literary critic and cultural historian. My principal areas of research interest are neo-Edwardian and Edwardian literature and culture, life writing, women's writing and the architectural humanities, from the later nineteenth century until the present.

Within, and between, these areas, I have worked on topics including women's diaries; neo-Victorianism; literary adaptation to film and television; Italian-Glaswegian cultures; Victorian and Edwardian spiritualism; a British Academy-funded conference, Architexture: Textual and Architectural Spaces, with the Department of Architecture, which led to the book Writing the Modern City; an ESRC seminar series, Nostalgia in the 21st Century, with the Department of Marketing, which led to a special journal issue of Consumption, Markets and Culture.

Current Research

I am currently working on three projects:

- a monograph on neo-Edwardianism

- a biographical project on the life and work of historian and educationalist Dorothy M. Meads (nee Gladish), which has been supported by a Carnegie Research Incentive Grant. I am also working with Andrew Chandler (University of Chichester) on a related book about women and British Christianity, 1880-1960.

- I am an investigator on a Leverhulme-funded project about libraries as transformative spaces, in collaboration with Kathy Hamilton, Juliette Wilson and Holly Porteous (Department of Marketing) and Glasgow Women's Library.

External reviewing

I have acted as an invited reviewer and panel member for many scholarly journals, publishers and funding bodies (see 'Professional Activities'). In 2020, I was commended for my outstanding contribution to the AHRC Peer Review College.

Undergraduate teaching

- Writing Through Time 2 (year 2 core class co-ordinator)

- La Belle Epoque: Edwardian and First World War Literature, 1900-20 (year 3 option)

- Present-Day Victorians: Neo-Victorian Fiction and Film (year 4 option)

I have been nominated for five Teaching Excellence Awards by Strathclyde Students’ Union.

I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA).

Postgraduate teaching

- Visions of Suburbia: Interdisciplinary Representations, 1850 - present (MLitt Interdisciplinary English Studies).

- Research Skills and Methods in Humanities.

Postgraduate research supervision

I would welcome enquiries from potential research students wishing to work in any of the areas listed under ‘research interests’. Below is an indicative list of current and previous supervisions.

Federica Giardino - 'The Legacy of the Water: a comparative study of the literary identity of the cities of Glasgow and Genoa'. Funded by an AHRC DTP studentship, in collaboration with Glasgow School of Art.

Miles Beard - 'The Fiction of Anita Brookner: Reception, Persona and Literary Value'. Funded by a Strathclyde Student Excellence Award.

Louise Logan - 'Beastly Encounters: human-animal relations in The Illustrated Police News and late Victorian and Edwardian culture’. Funded by an AHRC DTP studentship.

Innes McGarry - 'The Fiction of M. R. James'. Funded by an MRes Interdisciplinary Excellence Award.

Craig McLean - 'The Literary Architecture of Edwardian Suburbia'. Funded by a faculty studentship.

Roseannah Murphy - ‘The Literary Landscapes of Post-Industrial Glasgow: deindustrialisation, cultural policy and the postindustrial novel’. Funded by an AHRC studentship.

David Rush - ‘Glamour, Politics and Personality in the Mid-Century Middlebrow: the fiction of Nancy Mitford’. Funded by a faculty studentship. 

Souhir Zekri - 'Myth and Life Writing in the Fiction of Marina Warner'. Funded by a British Council studentship.