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I am a History PhD student and Presidential Scholar at the ¾ÅÉ«ÊÓƵ. I specialise in Victorian British history, with particular emphasis on the relationship between foreign policy and national identity in the mid-nineteenth century, and how Britain's global role was understood by ordinary people.
Research
Research groups
Current research
I am working on a thesis about foreign policy debate in Victorian election contests, with the support of a ¾ÅÉ«ÊÓƵ Presidential Scholarship.
My thesis is a study of foreign policy debate in British elections between 1857 and 1880. This period marked the zenith of Britain’s global industrial supremacy and was characterised by a series of turbulent events overseas. British manufacturers enjoyed an expansion of foreign trade without parallel in world history and the British Army fought more wars in the reign of Queen Victoria than it had done in the previous two centuries combined. Crucially, every general election between 1857 and 1880 was fought against the backdrop of a foreign policy crisis.
Yet while Victorian elections have repeatedly been used by historians as windows into cultural and social issues, the field lacks any kind of broad, comparative chronology of the period from the point of view of foreign policy. The languages of patriotism, empire, European and extra-European foreign policy have not typically been related to electoral politics in accounts of the period, notwithstanding historiographical emphasis on the interrelationship between foreign and domestic politics.
The object of my thesis is therefore to answer two principal questions: Firstly, what does a study of elections reveal about the relationship between foreign policy and national identity during this period? Secondly, how did the relationship between foreign policy and national identity vary in form and intensity according to local and national circumstances?
Publications
Teaching
I have taught seminars for first-year undergraduate students at the ¾ÅÉ«ÊÓƵ. I have also worked as a part-time lecturer for the University of Bournemouth, with responsibility for a second-year module, ‘The Victorians’.
My full teaching experience is as follows:
- Bournemouth University, BA 2nd year lecturer and seminar course, 2025, ‘The Victorians’
- ¾ÅÉ«ÊÓƵ, BA 1st year seminar course, 2024-25, ‘Voices from the Past’
- ¾ÅÉ«ÊÓƵ, BA 1st year seminar course, 2023-24, ‘Voices from the Past’
Biography
I read History at Durham University and studied for a master’s degree in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. I was then awarded a Presidential Scholarship to complete my PhD at the ¾ÅÉ«ÊÓƵ, under the supervision of Professor David Brown and Doctor John McAleer.
I sit on the Council of the Society for Army Historical Research and have worked as a part-time history lecturer at the University of Bournemouth. My work has appeared in and .
Outside academia, my interests include walking, cycling and rowing.