Education

I studied for a BA (Hons) in English at the University of Lancaster (1st class), followed by an MA in Critical Theory and DPhil in English Literature at the University of Sussex. My doctoral thesis, supervised by Professor Geoffrey Bennington, is entitled ‘Bordering the Aesthetic: Oscar Wilde and the discourses of literary modernity'.

Career

Between 1996 and 2003 I taught at the Universities of Sussex, Chichester and Winchester, joining the University of Huddersfield in 2003. I have been Head of English and Creative Writing since 2005. I have been a member of the external validation panels for undergraduate and postgraduate degree courses at the Universities of Worcester and Central Lancashire and at Edge Hill and York St John Universities. I was external examiner for BA (Hons) English and BA (Hons) English with American Literature at the University of Winchester from 2015-17. In 2017 I was external examiner at the University of Portsmouth for a PhD on Arthur Conan Doyle, Fandom and the Strand Magazine.

My research expertise is primarily in Victorian and Edwardian literature, with significant interests also in critical and cultural theory. My current research projects include work on literature and magic, Robert Louis Stevenson's travel narratives, detective fiction and the cultural history of deception.

I have supervised postgraduate research on Edmund Yates and Victorian sensation fiction, sadomasochism in the gothic fiction of Richard Marsh, Victorian ghost stories, and science and motherhood in the writings of Charlotte Haldane. I have also co-supervised a number of Creative Writing PhDs and MAs by Research.