Historian

When I’m not freelancing, I spend some of my time working on academic projects. At the moment I’m writing a range of essays on subjects including death masks, women’s history and Victorian art. 

I have a PhD from Oxford Brookes University, where I wrote my thesis on controversial Victorian opera singers. I have published on topics including Georgian singers, Victorian gothic fiction and the autobiography of Billie Holiday. My research has been funded by institutions including Princeton University and the National Portrait Gallery. I also worked as a Lecturer for a little while. 

I’ve given talks at a range of venues, from National Trust properties and London libraries to the Jewish Museum and the Red House in Aldeburgh. I have also presented my research at a number of major academic conferences. You can find a fill list on my Academia profile. 

If you’d like to know more about my research, keep an eye on my blog and check out my list of publications below.

Publications

[Chapter in edited collection] ‘In Memory of The Standard: Hard Rock in East London’, Venue Stories: Narratives, Memories, and Histories from Britain’s Independent Music Spaces, Eds. Fraser Man, Robert Edgar, Helen Pleasance (Equinox Publishing, 2023), 124-134

[Chapter in edited collection] ‘From the Stage to the Page: Male Opera Singers and the Nineteenth-Century Press’, Work and the Nineteenth-Century Press: Living Work for Living People, Ed. Andrew King (Routledge, 2022), 66-81.

[Journal article, co-authored with Dr Verity Burke] ‘Behind the Mask: Death Masks, Celebrity and the Laurence Hutton Collection’ in Victoriographies (2022), 12:1, 10-30.

[Journal article] ‘An Opera Singer’s Gothic Fiction: The Autobiographies of Sims Reeves’, in Journal of Musicological Research (2019), 38:3-4, 233-252.

[Chapter in edited collection] ‘Lady sings the blues? Tragedy, Autobiography and Reassessment’, in M Perez & J. McKee (eds.), Billie Holiday: Essays on the Artistry and Legacy (McFarland Press, 2019), 38-53.

[Edited collection] Michael Brown, Anna Maria Barry, Joanne Begiato (eds.), Military Masculinities in the Long Nineteenth Century (Manchester University Press, 2019)

[Chapter in edited collection] ‘Charles Incledon: A Singing Sailor on the Georgian Stage’ in Michael Brown, Anna Maria Barry, Joanne Begiato (eds.), Military Masculinities in the Long Nineteenth Century (Manchester University Press, 2019), 82-101.

[Exhibition catalogue entry] ‘Farinelli by Nazari’, Éblouissante Venise (Les éditions Rmn-Grand Palais, 2018), 

[Journal article] ‘“The Singer’s Work is a Picture Painted on Air”: Operatic Autobiographies of the Nineteenth Century’, Peer English (2015), 10, 57-72.