I teach on the German, Comparative Literature and Culture, and Translation Studies programmes in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures. I’m an expert in contemporary literature and gender studies, who is also a practising translator and a writer of fiction.
I studied French and German at Exeter College, Oxford, before completing a PhD at Swansea University. My first book arose from my PhD and is a study of motherhood in women’s writing in German of the 1970s and 1980s.
After completing my PhD, I spent two years in Finland, teaching at the University of Helsinki, the University of Jyväskylä, and the University of Lapland. I also carried out research into the Finnish-based German poet Dorothea Grünzweig. This research fed into my second book, which I wrote thanks to a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship held at Royal Holloway 2007-2009: Nomadic Ethics in Contemporary Women’s Writing in German: Strange Subjects (Camden House, 2012).
My most recent book is Willful Girls: Gender and Agency in Contemporary Fiction in English and German(Camden House, 2018), and I have also co-edited two volumes of essays, one on ethics in contemporary German literature and culture, and one on motherhood in literature and culture.
I am in addition a prize-winning translator of Finnish fiction and poetry. My translation of a poem by Finnish modernist Eeva-Liisa Manner won joint third prize in the 2009 Stephen Spender competition.
I have also published two novellas: Blue Moments (Valley Press, 2020), and An Approach to Black (Reflex Press, 2021).
More information about my research is available via PURE.
