About
I worked at the Universities of Oxford, Lancaster and Leeds before coming to Liverpool as Dean of the School of Histories, Languages and Cultures in 2021. I am a Strategic Reviewer and member of the Peer Review College for UKRI and AHRC, an expert and panellist for the Polish National Science Centre, and an assessor for the Irish Research Council and the European Research Council.
Following a PhD focusing on French women's autobiographical responses to twentieth-century maternalist policies, my research has focused on women's experiences in, and cultural responses to, the First World War in France and Britain, which has resulted in my recent monographs Women as Veterans in Britain and France after the First World War (Cambridge University Press, 2018) and Warrior Women: The Cultural Politics of Armed Women, c.1850-1945 (Cambridge University Press, 2023). From 2018-20 I was PI of a research project Tracing the Belgian Refugees, investigating Belgians who lived in the UK during and after the war, one of the AHRC projects featured in the 2020-21 Imperial War Museum exhibition Refugees: Forced To Flee. I'm currently co-leading an AHRC-funded project with Dr Matilda Greig, historian at the National Army Museum, on the topic of war and gender in modern Europe.
Recent publications include an article on responses to nursing enemy patients amongst French, British and German nurses, an article in preparation on the experiences of former First World War nurses who became engaged in humanitarian and relief work in the 1920s, and an edited volume on War and Gender in Modern Europe. I am currently supervising a PhD student in partnership with Imperial War Museums on Bethlem Royal Hospital during the First World War.
During the First World War Centenary I led Legacies of War 1914-18/2014-18, a series of regional, national and international research projects and outreach activities with over fifty partners focusing on the Centenary of the First World War and was one of the Co-Investigators of the AHRC Gateways to the First World War Public Engagement Centre based at the University of Kent. I also delivered a series of public talks and lectures, and acted as a historical consultant and interviewee for several television and radio productions including the Woman's Hour drama The Camel Hospital (2014) David Olusoga’s BBC documentary The World's War: Forgotten Soldiers of Empire (2014) and We Will Remember Them (BBC, 2018).
I would welcome enquiries from postgraduate students or postdoctoral researchers interested in topics relating to my research specialisms, particularly the First World War, and the cultural and social history of women and war.