About
I joined the Department of Languages, Cultures and Film at the University of Liverpool as head of department in 2024. Prior to that I held the role of Associate Professor of Postcolonial Studies and Cultural Heritage at Nottingham Trent University where I was awarded the Vice-Chancellor's Early Career Researcher award in 2018. I have also taught at Goldsmiths, University of London, King's College London and Université Paris-Nanterre. My research encompasses a range of topics and approaches including carceral cultures, postcolonial literature, visual culture, museum and heritage studies, environmental humanities and French theory.
My first monograph, based on my PhD research, Foucault/Paul: Subjects of Power (Palgrave, 2013) was situated within the turn to religion in continental philosophy. My interest in the work of Michel Foucault and his involvement with the Groupe d'information sur les prisons (GIP) subsequently led me to an ongoing interest in the history and heritage of colonial prisons and penalscapes, focusing on France's former overseas penal colonies in French Guiana, New Caledonia and Vietnam. Between 2018 and 2021 I held an AHRC early career fellowship for the project 'Postcards from the bagne.' Whilst working on this project, I developed a wider interest in France's complex carceral heritage and extensive use of camps during the 20th Century which resulted in my second monograph France's memorial landscape: Views from Camp des Milles (Liverpool University Press, 2023). I am currently developing a new project looking at the colonial and cultural history of the castor bean [ricinus communis].
I have supervised PhD projects and MA dissertations on a range of topics including autobiographical comics, art and politics, museums, care and well-being, migration museums. I am currently supervising a Collaborative doctoral award with National Justice Museum focused on the museum’s convict transportation exhibition and narratives of youth transportation. I would welcome enquiries from prospective postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers for projects on Francophone postcolonial studies, carceral cultures, visual culture and museum studies.