I specialise in modern and contemporary literatures and have a background in childhood and age studies.

As Associate Professor in Community Engagement in English, I design and teach modules with an experiential, practical or placement component. These modules function as an avenue for students to take literature and theory out of the classroom whilst exploring a new role in the community or credit-bearing their existing volunteer work or activism. How we continue to make the study of literature relevant to the cares and concerns of an increasingly diverse student body faced with precarious global futures, is a question that informs my teaching practice and scholarship. I believe experiential and community-engaged teaching is one way to do this and, in my scholarship, I explore the impact of these practices on student transitions into, through and out of humanities programmes.

My background in English Literature also informs my approach to student support where, in my role as Lead Academic Success Advisor for the Central Foundation Year Programme (CFY), I’ve explored the place of storytelling in student transitions. Our use of storytelling techniques to structure personal tutoring engagement has been championed by the UK Advising & Tutoring group (UKAT) and adopted as part of their CPD offer. With the broader CFY student experience team, we have won the UKAT award for “Outstanding student support” (2024) and the Pearson HE Innovate award for “Most innovative approach to student support” (2022).