Although I grew up in a small town nestled on the outskirts of the New Forest, much of my childhood was spent visiting family in rural Ireland. After learning of the fraught tension between women’s bodily autonomy and the Catholic Church’s influence over Irish politics, my interest in reproductive healthcare was piqued, providing a crucial foundation for my doctoral thesis in which I am currently researching reproductive rights in contemporary dystopian fiction. I aim to explore the ways in which current writers are responding to reproductive justice issues and their connections to Queer Theory and literature of the Anthropocene. I also undertook my MA at Durham, writing my dissertation on surrogacy in contemporary dystopian and speculative fiction. 

Before arriving in Durham, I studied for my BA at the University of Sussex, in Brighton. I wrote my undergraduate dissertation on gender performativity in Southern Gothic literature, a literary subgenre I continue to cherish and revisit regularly. Although my research is focused on bioethics and dystopian literature, I am also interested in Southern Gothic literature and literature from the fin de siècle.

I am particularly interested in how attitudes towards gender, sexuality, and pregnancy have evolved over the course of the 20th and 21st centuries. I also work with ecocritical concepts and Queer Theory, exploring the role of children in a future threatened by ecological collapse. As part of my project, I am affiliated with Durham’s Institute for Medical Humanities, and I am also a member of the Centre for Research into Violence and Abuse, the Centre for Culture and Ecology, and the Centre for Gender and Law at Durham.

​​I welcome any enquiries about my thesis and am open to collaboration on any relevant projects or research papers. Please feel free to contact me through my Durham Staff profile here. Attached below is the latest copy of my CV.