Introduction

I grew up in London before coming up to Oxford to read English at Lady Margaret Hall. After graduating, I moved to Jesus College, Oxford for my Masters in medieval literature and subsequently for my DPhil. I have taught medieval English language and literature, and the English language, at a variety of Oxford colleges since 2008. Most recently, I have been working as a researcher on the EU-funded project CLASP: A Consolidated Library of Anglo-Saxon Poetry located at the English Faculty here in Oxford. 

Teaching

I teach medieval language and literature, covering the period from the earliest written records of English in the seventh century until the reign of Henry VIII in the mid-sixteenth century. My teaching focuses, however, particularly upon the early medieval period. I also teach the history and development of the English language.

Research

My research focuses on Old English literature (roughly anything written in English before the twelfth century). I have particular interests in vernacular poetics, cultural constructions of space and place, and architectural metaphor. I am also peculiarly interested in the conceptualization of prisons in early medieval prose and verse, which is the focus of the book on which I’m currently working.

Publications

  • ‘The Gates of Hell: Invasion and Damnation in an Anonymous Old English Easter Vigil Homily’, in Leeds Studies in English: Special Issue – Architectural Representation in Early Medieval England (forthcoming).
  • ‘Landes to fela: Geography, Topography and Place in The Battle of Maldon’, in English Studies 98:8 (2017), 781–801.
  • ‘Associative Memory and the Composition of Ælfric’s Dominica in Quinquagessima (Catholic Homilies I 10)’, Notes & Queries 64:1 (2017), 5–10.
  • ‘Rewriting Gregory the Great: the Prison Analogy in Napier Homily I’, Review of English Studies 68 (2017), 203–23.
  • ‘Incarceration as Judicial Punishment in Anglo-Saxon England’, in eds. Jay Paul Gates and Nicole Marafioti, Capital and Corporal Punishment in Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2014), 92–112.
  • ‘Literal and Spiritual Depths: re-thinking the ‘drygne seað’ of Elene’, Quaestio Insularis 10 (2009), 27–44.