BA (Sydney), MA (Melbourne), Dphil (Oxon), PhD
At Downing, I am Director of Studies in English, I teach the literature of the Renaissance, and I oversee the production of the college literary magazine, The Leaves.
You can read about my academic research on my English Faculty page.
I am also a fiction and non-fiction writer. For more on this, please visit my personal website.
Monographs:
Vanishing Landscapes (Hodder and Stoughton, 2025).
Botanical Culture and Popular Belief in Shakespeare’s England (Cambridge University Press, 2024).
Chastity in Early Stuart Literature and Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2015; paperback, 2017). Featured here: The Language and Literature of Chastity
Edited Collections:
Oxford Handbook of Modern Catholic Women Writers (Oxford University Press, 2027)
Cambridge Handbook of Literature and Plants (Cambridge University Press, 2024).
(With Eleanor Decamp, eds.), Blood Matters: Studies in European Literature and Thought, 1400-1700 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018). Featured here: Blood and Bodies.
Book Chapters:
‘‘‘Fairy Bowers’ and ‘Precious Flowers’ in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Elizabethan Court Culture’, in Susannah Lyon-Whaley (ed.), Floral Culture and the Tudor and Stuart Courts (Amsterdam University Press, 2024).
(With Julia Meszaros), 'British and Irish Novels and the Catholic Imagination,' The Oxford History of British and Irish Catholicism (OUP, 2023).
'Introduction', The Cambridge Handbook of Literature and Plants (Cambridge University Press, 2024).
'Shakespeare, Then and Now', The Cambridge Handbook of Literature and Plants (Cambridge University Press, 2024).
'“The blood of English shall manure the ground”: the almanac in Richard II’s vision of soil and body management’, in Hilary Eklund (ed.), Ground-Work: Soil Science in Renaissance Literature (Duquesne University Press, 2017), 59-78.
‘Blood, Milk, Poison: Romeo and Juliet’s tragedy of “green” desire and corrupted blood’, Blood Matters: Studies in European Literature and Thought, 1400-1700 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), 134-150.
(With Eleanor Decamp), ’Introduction’, Blood Matters: Studies in European Literature and Thought, 1400-1700 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), 1-14.
Journal Articles:
'Young Love', The Belfast Review (2024)
'Tree, Ballads, Iconoclam, and the Garden in Richard II,' Shakespeare Journal special edition: ‘Shakespeare and Gardens’, edited by Todd Borlik.
'Green', HOWL 1 (2022).
'Treasure', Hinterland 10 (2022).
'The Tree That Grows Forever,' Dappled Things (2022).
'Idolatry', Brick Lane Bookshop: New Short Stories (2022)
(With Julia Meszaros), 'Ward (nee Hope-Scott), Josephine Mary', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2022).
(with Myles O'Gorman), 'Shakespeare's Statuary Women and the Indoor Theatre's Discovery Space', Early Theatre 24 (2021), 89–112.
(With Beth Dubow) ‘Allegories of Creation: Glassmaking, Forests and Fertility in Webster's The Duchess of Malfi’, Renaissance Drama 45 (2017), 107-137.
(With Eleanor Decamp and Laurie Maguire, ’The Bloody Truth', Bulletin of the Society of Renaissance Studies 31 (2014), 11-13.
‘Interpreting the Person: tradition, conflict, and Cymbeline’s Imogen’, Shakespeare Quarterly 59:2 (2008), 156–184.
‘The Convention of Innocence and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’s Literary Sophisticates’, Parergon: Journal of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies 24:1 (2007), 41–66.
‘Critical Relationships: Sense & Sensibility on page and screen’, Sensibilities: The Journal of the Australian Jane Austen Society 32 (2006).
Critical Editions (with Introductions):
(with Julia Meszaros) Caryll Houselander, The Dry Wood (CUA Press, 2021).
(with Julia Meszaros) Sheila-Kaye Smith, The End of the House of Alard (CUA Press, 2022).
(with Julia Meszaros) Josephine Ward, One Poor Scruple (CUA Press, 2022).
(with Julia Meszaros) Enid Dinnis, Complete Short Stories Volume One (CUA Press, 2024).
(with Julia Meszaros) Mary Beckett, Give Them Stones (CUA Press, 2025).