About our staff

I received my MA from the University of Chicago in 2000 and my PhD from Cambridge University in 2006.

In 2006–2007 I was Leverhulme Visiting Fellow in British History at the University of Sunderland, and in 2007–2008 I held a teaching fellowship at the University of Warwick.

From 2009-2014 I was assistant, and then an associate, professor of history at Central Michigan University.

I joined the University of Edinburgh as Teaching Fellow in Modern British History in September 2014.

Summary of research interests

• Britain & Ireland

• Comparative & Global History
• Culture
• Ideas
• Imperialism
• Landscapes & Monuments
• Politics
• Society

• Nineteenth Century

I specialise in the history of Victorian Britain and its empire. My recently published book, Liberalism and Local Government in Early-Victorian London, explores the ways in which cultures and institutions of local government helped to shape metropolitan liberalism between 1832 and 1855.

I am also interested in Victorian attitudes toward ‘heritage’, Victorian modernity, and the role played by municipal institutions and municipal cultures in constructing imperial identity and promoting imperial cohesion.

My current research investigates the influence of time spent in India on the policy thought of Charles Edward Trevelyan, Sir John McNeill and a handful of other mid-Victorian civil servants.

• British History 1
• Themes in History
• The White Man’s Burden: Race, Gender and Victorian Imperialism