About
Originally trained as a teacher in Canada, I taught for ten years in northern Alberta before returning to university and pursuing postgraduate studies in History as a mature student. I completed my MA at the University of Alberta moved to Oxford (courtesy of receiving a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Fellowship Award), where I was fortunate to complete my DPhil under the late Professor Paul Langford. I joined the Department of History at the University of Liverpool in May 2016 from Bath Spa University.
My primary research interests lie in English social and political history in the long eighteenth century. I am particularly interested in the interplay of gender and politics. Eighteenth-century British electoral history fascinates me, particularly the intricacies of pre-Reform controverted elections. My research is wide-ranging and engages with questions of place and space, power and identity, patronage and corruption, and influence and interest. Electoral history, political ritual, the material culture of politics and the use of the social arena for political ends all feature extensively in my research and teaching.
My long-term involvement with the Danish-led Gender in the European Town project piqued my interest in questions of space, place and environment when considering the gendering of the urban environment. This, in combination with my long-term research project on the largely unknown diaries of Elizabeth Wynne Fremantle (1778-1857), has led me to considerations of early nineteenth-century elite sociability and especially to the study of English cosmopolitanism in Europe (particularly Florence and Nice). The Fremantle project -- The Admirals Wife: An Intimate History of Family, Navy and Empire -- was awarded a British Academy Research Development Award Scheme (BARDAs) award in June 2010 and will generate several more articles or chapters, as well as a monograph.
I welcome enquiries from prospective postgraduate students who are interested in studying topics related to any of my research interests in the long eighteenth century.