University of Edinburgh

Graduate Student, History of Art

PhD Candidate

About

I am a first-year doctoral candidate at the University of Edinburgh. My thesis will examine interactions between women and classical antiquity in the long eighteenth century, with a particular emphasis on the specific nature of this engagement. The thesis will address how classical culture, traditionally the expression of rational and enlightened masculinity, was received, appropriated and used by British women throughout this period.

My current research focuses on the aesthetic agency of the Parminter cousins of A la Ronde, Devon. I am particularly interested in the interrelation of A la Ronde's decorative programme - which serves as both an aesthetic and physical relic of the cousins' decade-long continental tour - and the intensely homosocial relationship of its inhabitants.

My MA thesis explored representations of the consumption of foreignness in the visual and material culture of this period. Research from this thesis will be published as ‘Taste à-la-mode: the consumption of foreigness in eighteenth-century visual culture’ in the forthcoming Ashgate title Enlightened Objects: Essays on Material Culture and Gender in Eighteenth-Century Europe (from the series The Histories of Material Culture and Collecting, 1700-1950, 2012) co-edited by Jennifer Germann and Heidi Strobel. Part of this research was also presented at the Association of Art Historians Annual Conference 2012.

I am currently organising, with Dr. Viccy Coltman and my colleague Jordan Mearns (http://edinburgh.academia.edu/JordanMearns) a multi-disciplinary conference on eighteenth-century sexualities entitled: Politeness and Prurience: situating transgressive sexualities in the long eighteenth century, which will take place at the University of Edinburgh in 2013.

Please see http://politenessandprurience.com/ for further details.

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