Thesis title:
Writing the pregnant body in Britain, 1918-1945
My thesis uses women’s writing—letters, diaries, novels, poetry, and autobiography—to explore what pregnancy felt like and what it meant in early-twentieth-century Britain. Drawing upon archives including the Marie Stopes Married Love correspondence and the Mass Observation collections, I aim to write pregnancy (back) into a historiography where it has too often been overlooked.
Research Area
Publications
- 'Secret History, No Future: Gender Failure and Reproductive Futurity at Hampden College,' Literatur in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 2/2024 (2025)
- 'Review: Danielle Dove, Victorian Dress in Contemporary Historical Fiction: Materiality. Agency and Narrative,' Romance, Revolution and Reform 7 (2025)
- ‘“Get Yourselves Under Control!”: Youth Sexuality in the Third Reich’, Central Europe Yearbook, 2 (2020)
- ‘“These Devils That Have Many Uses”: Possession and Liberation in Michel de Certeau’s Possession at Loudun’, Constellations, 10.2 (2019)
- ‘“The Erotic Work of Art Is Also Sacred”: Sex, Fear, and Fascination in the Art of Fin-de-Siècle Vienna’, Constellations, 10.2 (2019)
- ‘The Agony of Love and Fear: Nazism and the German Queer Community, 1920-1945’, Spectrum, 1, 2018
Conferences
- North American Conference on British Studies (NACBS) annual meeting: Montréal, Canada (November 2025)
- Paper: 'The union of three': Marie Stopes, her correspondents, and sex during pregnancy
- Second World War Research Group conference: 'The Second World War 80 Years On,' King's College London, London, UK (June 2025)
- Paper: 'This world into which I had the temerity to bring a new soul': Toward a history of pregnancy during the Second World War
- Social History Society annual conference, Durham University, Durham, UK (July 2024)
- Paper: 'I am writing for advice about a very intimate matter: Constructing the pregnant self in letters to Marie Stopes'
- Panel chair: Women's Work
- International Association for Maternal Action and Scholarship (IAMAS) annual conference, Boston University, Boston, USA (June 2024)
- Paper: 'The present flower of human development: Maternal age in Marie Stopes' Radiant Motherhood (1920)'
- British Association of Victorian Studies (BAVS) annual conference, University of Surrey, Guildford, UK (Aug/Sep 2023)
- Paper: 'The Haunting(s) of Lady Jane: Gender, Grief, and Ghosts in the Search for the Franklin Expedition, 1845-1860' (unpublished)
- Maternal Bodies Symposium, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK (June 2023)
- Paper: 'White Femininity and the Ideal Pregnant Body in Marie Stopes' Radiant Motherhood (1921)' (unpublished)
- Co-organiser, co-host, panel chair
- M4C CDF event
Public Engagement & Impact
- Booktober 2025, University of Birmingham, 4 October 2025
- Glasgow University Feminist Society 'Tuesday Talks,' 15 March 2022: Gender and Genocide
Other Research Interests
- Sensory history
- Emotional history
- Literary history
- Material culture
- Food history
- German studies
Memberships
- Maternal Bodies Network (founding member)
- Culture and the Reproductive Body Network (steering committee member)
- International Association for Maternal Action and Scholarship
- Perceptions of Pregnancy Research Network
- Women's History Network
- Social History Society
- Society for the Social History of Medicine
- International Nineteenth-Century Studies Association
Teaching
- The Making of the Modern World ca. 1500-1800
- PGTA for first-year module
- 2x seminar groups
- Autumn term 2024
