Associate Professor, Fellow and Tutor in German, St Peter's College
Research
My research focuses on German literature and culture of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and its later reception. Particular interests include German Romanticism, the writing of E.T.A. Hoffmann, myth, orientalism, and cultural transfer. I have also published on the practice and perception of authorship in the second half of the nineteenth century.
I was awarded my Ph.D at the University of Edinburgh (funded by the AHRC) in 2013, for my thesis 'The Image of the Orient in E.T.A. Hoffmann's Writing'. My first book, derived from this thesis, is entitled E.T.A. Hoffmann's Orient: Romantic Aesthetics and the German Imagination, and was published in Legenda's 'Germanic Literatures' series in 2016.
I am now working on a new project about the influence of German Romanticism in contemporary German and world literature. Having co-edited a volume on the impact and critical reception of German Romanticism in contemporary Latin America (2024), I am now focussing more specifically on the various uses of the wanderer motif, starting with Wilhelm Müller and Heinrich Heine, but stretching to the present day. I am also working on a new translation of E. T. A. Hoffmann's story collection, Night Pieces, which will come out with Oxford World's Classics in 2026.
Teaching
I teach the FHS German Paper VIII (Modern Literature and Culture, 1770- the present) and Paper X (Goethe, Hoffmann, Ebner-Eschenbach, Heine), and the prelims literature papers. I also teach translation.
As a former attendee of the Sutton Trust Summer School (now replaced by UNIQ Summer School at Oxford), I am particularly interested in schools access work. I have led seminars at UNIQ and college-based academic taster sessions.
Graduate Supervision
I have supervised graduate work on the following topics: Portrayals of Jewish Women in 19th-Century Prose Fiction; 19th-Century German-language Travelogues; Early German Romantic Translation; E. T. A. Hoffmann's Fictional Singers. I would be happy to hear from potential DPhil candidates working on areas including: German Romanticism; E. T. A. Hoffmann; the reception of Romanticism within and outside of Germany; Theories and Practices of World Literature; Orientalism and/or colonialism particularly in 19th-century contexts, and other areas germane to my research.
I am the course convenor for the German MSt Special Subject, 'Writing Rivers: National Identities, Transnational Contexts, and the Environment'.
Public Engagement
I have contributed to a multi-award winning podcast series on the composer Gustav Mahler, produced by Aaron Cohen of New York Public Radio, as both academic consultant and guest speaker: https://www.theworldofgustavmahler.org/
In October 2024 I gave a talk at the Royal Opera House, introducing E. T. A. Hoffmann as part of the 'Insights' event introducing a new production of The Tales of Hoffmann: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asK1gUV9S2Q and in June 2021 I was a speaker on the BBC Radio 3 'Free Thinking' programme dedicated to E. T. A. Hoffmann: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00188r7 I have also given talks at the Oxford International Song festival about the Romantic poet Wilhelm Müller and about the connections between Müller and Heinrich Heine.
Publications
Books
(ed. with Jenny Haase) German Romanticism and Latin America: New Connections in World Literature (Oxford: Legenda, 2024)
E.T.A. Hoffmann's Orient: Romantic Aesthetics and the German Imagination (Oxford: Legenda, 2016)
Book chapters and articles in peer-reviewed journals
'The functions of dreams in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Meister Floh (1822)', in Eyes Wide Shut: Dream Cultures in German Enlightenment and Romanticism, ed. by Sheila Dickson, Ricarda Schmidt, and Hans-Walter Schmidt-Hannisa (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2024), pp. 263-82
‘Franz Sternbald in the New World: Johann Moritz Rugendas and Travelling Painter Narratives from Latin America’ in German Romanticism and Latin America: New Connections in World Literature (Oxford: Legenda, 2024), pp. 69-90
‘Wilhelm Müller's Leiermann, Elfriede Jelinek's Leierfrau, and Radical Repetition’, Publications of the English Goethe Society, 88:1 (2019), 21-38
‘German Romanticism as Translational World Literature: Friedrich Schlegel's Lucinde and Andrés Neuman's El Viajero del Siglo’, Modern Languages Open, 2018 (1), 24. Fully open access: https://www.modernlanguagesopen.org/articles/10.3828/mlo.v0i0.179/
‘Speculative Authorship: The Family Narrative as Editorial Project in Theodor Storm’s Carsten Curator’, Forum for Modern Language Studies, 54:3 (2018), 320-34
‘The Dangers of Harmony: German Romantic Thought in Angela Carter’s The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman’, Forum for Modern Language Studies, 53:2 (2017), 200-219
‘Writers' Lives for the Nation: Karl Gutzkow's Author-Biographies and the German Book Market’, Oxford German Studies, 45:2 (2016), 157-74
‘Alla Turca versus the Romantic East: E.T.A. Hoffmann and Oriental-Style Music’, German Life and Letters, 67:2 (2014), 139-58
Edited journals
‘The Author in the Popular Imagination: Views from the Nineteenth Century’, Special Issue of Forum for Modern Language Studies, 54:3 (2018) (with Sandra Mayer)
MHRA Working Papers in the Humanities, 6: ‘Melancholy’ (2011) (with Alex Stuart)
MHRA Working Papers in the Humanities, 5: ‘Myth’ (2010) (with John McKeane)