Writer. Scholar. Educator.

I have worked in academia for much of my career to date. In the 1990s I did a PhD on the Poetry of William Morris at Birkbeck College, University of London, after having done an MA in Victorian Literature at the University of Nottingham. I kind of fell for the Victorians after discovering the Pre-Raphaelites via an exhibition of their drawings at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery while I was studying for my BA at the University of Birmingham.

I taught at the University of Wolverhampton for 20 years, ending up as Reader in English Literature and Pedagogy. I developed my own courses on Victorian Literature, Art and Culture and Fin de Siècle Literature and also taught courses on women’s writing and contemporary feminist theories, created my own Neo-Victorian MA module and filled in in various other places (Introduction to Poetry, Life-Writing, The Novel and Adaptation). Along the way I won three institutional awards for my teaching (in 2006, 2016 and 2017) and a National Teaching Fellowship (2011). I got my NTF in part for doing imaginative things with online/blended learning way before most people were interested in it. I left the University of Wolverhampton after I was directly pitched against another colleague to keep my job in a Faculty Review. I then taught at Royal Holloway, University of London, in 2020, first of all teaching on an Introduction to Poetry course and then I was employed on a fixed-term contract as a Teaching Fellow in Nineteenth-Century Literature.

I have written a book on Victorian Poetry, edited one on William Morris (with Phillippa Bennett), published a number of academic articles, and continue to be engaged as a thinker and scholar. I was Editor of the Journal of William Morris Studies for six years and am currently Reviews Editor. I have also been an External Examiner for a number of English Departments in the UK, and have acted as a manuscript reviewer and referee.

This part of my website is still a work-in-progress. If you want to see my full academic CV get in touch.