I'm a cultural and social historian, and a Research Associate at Sussex. I have taught Media & Cultural Studies modules that include Sound, Culture and Society, Culture and the Everyday, Advertising and Social Change, and Digital Environments.

My research concentrates on the place of the natural world, and ideas about nature, in the lives of Britons in the 19th and early 20th century. I consider the experience of living during these changing times in relation to the modernising forces of new communications technologies, urbanisation, mass consumption and world war. The fate of the senses in modern life - hearing and listening in particular - are of interest in that their study can reveal the ways in which people have paid attention to their environment. This work is generally framed as cultural and social history, but also engages with animal studies, cultural geography, media history and sound studies.

My first book is 'Listening to British Nature: Wartime, Radio and Modern Life, 1914-1945' (OUP, 2022) and stems from a development of an AHRC-supported PhD, supervised by Professors David Hendy and Michael Bull.

With Olga Petri at the University of Cambridge, I have edited the wonderful collection 'Winged Worlds: Common Spaces in Avian-Human Lives' (Routledge, 2023).

Recent publications have explored the keeping of wild songbirds in working and middle class homes in Victorian London, making the argument that such practices were a way of bringing close a sense of nature's vibrancy when it was lacking in many urban lives. Forthcoming is: 'Song Birds in East London Homes, from Henry Mayhew to Charles Booth' in Vicky Holmes and Joseph Harley (eds), The Working Class at Home, 1770-1940 (Palgrave-Macmillan).

Before returning to academia I worked for more than 20 years as a writer, editor, researcher and strategist in the publishing and digital media spheres for organisations like the London School of Economics, SOAS, the British Council, the Department of Health, the NHS, Vodafone, Decca Music and British Airways.