Department Member, Classics and Ancient History
About
From December 2011 - July 2012 I will be a Teaching Fellow in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Bristol.
Besides teaching, my main project is preparing my PhD thesis for publication. 'Greece and Rome at the Crystal Palace. Classical Sculpture and Modern Britain, 1854-1936' is under contract with Oxford University Press and is due in 2012. It examines the social, political, and aesthetic role of ancient Greek and Roman sculpture in modern Britain, assessing how classical art figured in debates over design reform, taste, beauty and morality, race and imperialism. It revises the assumption that classical civilisations were exclusively the property of the elite, situating classical sculpture outside the Country House, University and Museum. My research also provides a detailed examination of the display of sculpture alongside stuffed animals, ethnological models and consumer items at the Crystal Palace after 1851, when it was removed to the South London suburb of Sydenham.
My principal research interests lie in the visual culture of nineteenth-century Britain and the United States, spanning international exhibitions, museums, photography, sculpture and painting. Audience response and behaviour around sculpture is a particular concern. I am also currently co-organising a 2 day international conference on the vexed relationship between Art and Industry in c19th Britain.
I studied for my PhD in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck College London (Sept 2005-June 2009). In 2009/10 I was Henry Moore Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Bristol's Institute for Greece, Rome and the Classical Tradition. In 2010/11 I was a Teaching Fellow in the History of Art at the University of York, and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.
