About
My research explores how literature has engaged with science from the nineteenth century to the present, with particular specialties in drama, environmental thought, and North American literary cultures.
My first monograph Endless Forms: Heredity in American Literature, 1890–1931 (2026) draws on extensive archival research to show how theatre became a crucial site for rethinking heredity at the turn of the twentieth century. Focusing on Henry James, W. E. B. Du Bois, Edith Wharton, and Elizabeth Robins, it argues that these writers treated heredity as open-ended and contingent rather than deterministic. This view led them to emphasize the power of environments and explore possibilities for institutional reform. Research from the project has appeared in Modern Drama, The Cambridge Companion to Modernist Theatre, and Oxford Bibliographies in Victorian Literature.
My current research develops a broader interest in how writers since the nineteenth century have thought about the environment. A major strand of this work, Imagining Alternative Arctics, rethinks literary writing about the Far North by foregrounding the work of Inuit writers, women, and writers of colour, and by examining how these writers respond to the scientific and cultural institutions through which Arctic knowledge has circulated. This project has received support from the British Academy and forms the basis of ongoing collaborative research. Related work extends these questions into other environmental and cultural contexts, including early-twentieth-century American folk drama and Native American cultures. Research in this area has been supported by fellowships at the Huntington Library and the British Library.
I also maintain an active strand of research interest in the digital and public-facing humanities focusing on the changing nature of reading. Since 2018, I have been a core member and lead curator of LitHits, a digital reading project developed with Oxford University Innovations. LitHits introduces non-specialist readers to short literary works across periods and genres. The project has also resulted in the book The Ten Minute Book Club (2026) and a weekly Substack newsletter (sign up by clicking here).
I am Director of the Literature and Science Hub Research Centre at the University of Liverpool, where I have been a Lecturer in English since 2023. I initially joined Liverpool as William Noble Research Fellow in 2021 after finishing my DPhil at the University of Oxford the same year. I completed my MA in English: 1850 to present at King's College London and my BA in English and History at Illinois State University.
I welcome messages from prospective doctoral students interested in literature and science, environmental humanities, drama and performance, or related interdisciplinary approaches.