Emma is an art historian interested in uncovering the plurality of creative practices in early-twentieth-century Britain and their interrelationship with a fledgling market for contemporary art. She has a particular focus on practitioners who worked in the 'unfenced borderlands' of art, craft and design and who were marginalised by gender and class. Her PhD explores the artist Thérèse Lessore (1884–1945) and her engagement with the 'popular' in subject matter and medium and is supported by an AHRC CHASE doctoral scholarship (2025–2029)

She has presented several papers on Lessore and her broad network across art and craft as well as enquiries into the methodological challenges of research into women and working-class artists of the period. Recent conferences include the Association for Art History’s Summer Symposium (2026) and Annual Conference (2024 and 2026), the Annual International Women in the Arts (AIWAC) Conference, Rome (2025), IULM symposium Artists and Collections: Histories, Practices and Interactions, Milan (2025), and the Decorative Arts Society’s Annual Symposium (2025). An article proposing an alternative history of Louise Powell and Thérèse Lessore by recentring ceramics in their artistic lives is forthcoming in the Decorative Arts Society Journal (October 2026). Papers from the 2025 ILUM and AIWAC conferences are due to be published in late 2026 and 2027 respectively.