• PhD, University of Cambridge
• M.Phil, University of Cambridge
• BA Hons, University of Cambridge

I joined the School of History of Cultures as a Lecturer in Modern History in September 2011. This followed on from a postdoctoral research fellowship with the Cambridge Victorian Studies Group on a five-year Leverhulme funded project entitled ‘Past versus Present: Abandoning the Past in an Age of Progress’ which explored Victorian notions of the past. Before this, I studied as both an undergraduate and postgraduate at Christ’s College, Cambridge.

This is a selection of my current undergraduate teaching.

First Year

• 'The Making of the Contemporary World'
• 'War, Armed Forces and Society'
• Practising History 1: ‘Representing Race in Modern Britain: Exhibitions, Empire and Entertainment in Modern Britain, 1886-1936’
• Practising History 2: 'Empires in Perspective' on writing the history of British imperialism

Second Year

• 'Empire on Display', Group Research Module
• Research Methods

Third Year

• 'Genocide: An Interdisciplinary Perspective', Advanced Option Module
• Forthcoming Special Subject relating to my interests in settler colonialism, genocide and interethnic conflict

I am happy to discuss offering postgraduate supervision in any topic relating to nineteenth-century notions of race, science and empire in world history. More specific topics include: 

• History of science especially anthropology, racial theory and the life sciences
• Intercultural conflict, genocide and settler colonialism
• Intercultural encounter, travel and exploration
• Tipu Sultan, Tipu's Tiger and images of India
• Collection, display and showmanship in popular entertainment
• Ephemera, visual culture and the history of advertising
• History of nineteenth-century urban Britain, particularly in reference to immigration and racial diversification

My research explores the ways in which racialized knowledge is produced, circulated and mobilised in the modern world. I’m most interested in how racialized knowledge is used to inform and transform political policies. I'm also concerned by the ways in which histories of race, science and empire are relevant to contemporary debates on issues as diverse as the handling of human remains and the restitution of land rights to formerly colonised peoples.

My first book, Peoples on Parade, exlpored the commercial exhibition of displayed peoples in nineteenth-century Britain and the importance of such shows for intercultural encounter and notions of racial difference. 

I am currently working on notions of human extinction and interethnic conflict for my second book, provisionally entitled ‘Exterminate all the Brutes’: Modern Settler Colonialism and the Future of Endangered Races.

In 2012, my research was awared a Philip Leverhulme Prize in Medieval, Early Modern and Modern History by the Leverhulme Trust.

Birmingham heroes: recovering the past to improve humanity's future

Global History

I currently convene a new MA in Global History within the School of History and Cultures. This follows on from a workshop on Global History held in June 2012. This will be available for September 2013 entry.

For more information please see MA Global History coursefinder entry.

Saving Humans

Between Easter 2013 and summer 2014, I will be involved in one of two inaugural research themes for the new Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of Birmingham.  For more information on 'Saving Humans' see the IAS homepage and theme outline.

Books

• Peoples on Parade: Exhibitions, Empire and Anthropology in Nineteenth-Century Britain (University of Chicago Press, 2011). Joint winner of the Sonya Rudikoff Award for the best first book in Victorian Studies published in 2011. Awarded by the Northeast Victorian Studies Association in 2013.
• Time Travellers: Victorian Perspectives on the Past coedited with Adelene Buckland (University of Chicago Press, expected 2014).

Articles and Essays

• 'Dying Americans: Race, Extinction and Conservation in the New World', in Astrid Swenson and Peter Mandler, eds, From Plunder to Preservation: Britain and the Heritage of Empire, 1800–1950 (Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 269–288.
• 'Tipu’s Tiger and Images of India, 1799–2010’, in Sarah Longair and John McAleer, eds, Curating Empire: Museums and the British Imperial Experience, Studies in Imperialism (Manchester University Press, 2013), pp. 207–224.
• 'Peopling the Landscape: Showmen, Displayed Peoples and Travel Illustration in Victorian Britain', Early Popular Visual Culture, 10 (2012), 23–36.
• 'Meeting the Zulus: Displayed Peoples, British Imperialism and the Shows of London, 1853–1879', in Joe Kember, John Plunkett, Jill Sullivan, eds, Popular Exhibitions, Science and Showmanship, 1840–1914 (Pickering and Chatto, 2012), pp. 183–198.
• 'Robert Gordon Latham, Displayed Peoples and the Natural History of Race, 1854–1866', Historical Journal, 54 (2011), 143–166.
• 'Reading Ephemera', in Rosalind Crone and Shafquat Towheed, eds, The History of Reading, 3 vols (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 135-155.
• 'Displaying Sara Baartman, the "Hottentot Venus"', History of Science, 42 (2004), 233–257.

In Progress

• Historiographical review of recent themes in the global history of exploration, travel and indigenous knowledge for the Historical Journal
• 'Looking to Our Ancestors' in Time Travellers: Victorian Perspectives on the Past coedited with Adelene Buckland
• 'Dramas of Development: Evolution in Victorian Exhibitionary Culture' for a collection of essays on Darwin and nineteenth-century visual culture (Cambridge University Press)