I work on late medieval literature but my research often extends into the early modern period. I specialise in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. My main areas of interest are:

- Literature in European context. My research typically takes a comparative, transcultural approach, as I work across multiple languages. I look at English literary activity and book production in relation to continental Europe, and ask what it means to study literature from a European perspective. My most recent publications look at multilingual contexts, the international circulation of French narratives, and Anglo-Dutch exchanges in early printed books.

- History of books and those who made and owned them. My work integrates literary study with historical and book-historical approaches. I am as interested in the materiality of books as I am in those who made, read or collected them. I am particularly interested in the role people played in the transmission of books and texts across languages, borders, and time. I work on both manuscripts and early print, but have recently published mainly on the earliest printed books. I have also become more interested in women as readers and book collectors.

- Prose romances. I work on medieval romance and specialise in prose romances, the ugly ducklings of the genre. They are as weird and wonderful as their verse cousins, full of strange plotlines, larger than life characters, and supernatural encounters. Yet they are often considered second rate, mainly because most are translations and so do not feat neatly into national canons. I aim to put them back on the map, as they tell us much about a time when English was still a marginal language and English literature was far from the cultural juggernaut it is today.

- Transformations and medievalisms. I am also interested in stories of transformations and the supernatural, and in modern reimaginings of medieval worlds. These interests return mostly in my teaching, where I cover, for instance, Arthurian tales, faeries, magic, women who turn into dragons, the walking dead, and the use of medieval settings and tropes in modern fantasy fiction.

My first monograph The Mélusine Romance in Medieval Europe: Translation, Circulation, and Material Contexts (D.S. Brewer, 2020) was shortlisted for the University English Book Prize. The study is the first to consider how the romance of Mélusine – about a beautiful fairy woman who is cursed to transform into a half-serpent once a week – transformed from a local legend to an international bestseller, analysing versions in French, German, Castilian, Dutch, and English.

My recent project ‘Continental Connections: European Bestselling Romances in England (c. 1400-1600)’ was funded by the Leverhulme Trust. It examines a group of European bestselling romances that arrive in England in the late medieval period and fuel new translation, copying, and printing activities. The project breaks important ground by placing the English versions within a pan-European framework, to trace the international networks surrounding their production and readership, and to uncover to what extent these texts actively participated in European literary trends and which features might set the English versions apart.

My published articles and book chapters are on topics like medieval bestsellers and their readers, late medieval and early modern translation strategies, the cross-cultural copying of woodcuts, women as readers and collectors, and the marketing of foreign narratives in England. Upcoming publications are on Wynkyn de Worde's prose romances, the Seven Sages of Rome, and Paris and Vienne in Iberia.

Media and public talks:

I am keen to share my passion for medieval culture and books with non-academic audiences. I have appeared on the BBC Radio 4 podcast You're Dead to Me, BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking, the HistoryExtra podcast, and BBC Radio York. I have written for BBC History Magazine and The Conversation, and was cited as an expert in The New York Times. I have given public talks for the Being Human Festival and the York Festival of Ideas. My voice can be heard reciting lines from Middle English texts for sound projects for English Heritage and the York Minster, and I contributed to a museum exhibition on Mélusine at the Historial de la Vendée in France.

Research groups

• Historical English Language & Linguistics
• Medieval & Early Modern

List by: Type | Date

2019–22  Principal Investigator, Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship, project ‘Continental Connections: European Bestselling Romances in England (c.1400-1600)’, £93,000.

I would be keen to supervise projects relating to medieval romance; translation and the cross-cultural movement of medieval and early modern books and texts; women as owners, readers, and writers of books; early printed books and 'bestsellers'; English literature and its connections to continental traditions; transformations, otherworlds, and the supernatural; and medievalisms.

My core languages are medieval English, French, Dutch, Castilian, and German, but I would also be interested in comparative studies that include other European languages.

I currently lecture on the Middle English strands of our pre-Honours courses, and I also convene and teach the Honours course 'Medieval Literature: Other Worlds'. At postgraduate level, I convene and teach on the course 'Love, Death, and Dragons: Medievalism and Fantasy'.

Fellow, Royal Historical Society (2024)

Fellow, Higher Education Academy (2020-present)

Selection of recent public activities:

Episode on Printing in England for You're Dead to Me (July 2024)

Episode on 'Chivalry' for the HistoryExtra podcast (2024)

Recorded lines in Middle English for a sound and visual projection piece in the York Minster (2023)

Recorded lines from a Middle English Arthurian romance for the 'Voices of Clifford’s Tower' sound project with artist Karen Monid, for English Heritage

Talk at the event celebrating the 70th anniversary of Tolkien’s lecture on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight at the University of Glasgow, organised by Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic (April 2023)

Contributed to BBC Radio 3 Free Thinking episode on Melusine (2022)

'Medieval Romances, Trash Fiction, and Rebel Women’. Talk for York Festival of Ideas, sponsored by BBC History Magazine (2021)

'Knights, dragons, and beasts: the strange world of medieval romance’, HistoryExtra podcast (2021)

Writing pieces for catalogue accompanying the exhibition Mélusine, secrets d'une fée at the Historial de la Vendée, France (2019)

Organised event on Medieval Magic at Barley Hall, and event on Medieval Magical Creatures for the York Festival of Ideas (2019)