Research

My doctoral thesis considers the observation that drama and theatricality resurface repeatedly and in diverse ways throughout the Jansenist controversy. I seek to understand tensions concerning the moral status of theatre, comic ridicule, and publicity in religious polemics, and to explore the prevalence of theatrical insults and dramatic literary forms in satirical writing by warring Jansenists and Jesuits in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. I am also interested in Voltaire and Rousseau.

I graduated from Lincoln College with a BA in French and German in 2023, before staying on to complete an MSt in Modern Languages (French and German) in 2024.

My research is co-supervised by Dr. Jessica Goodman and Prof. Kate Tunstall, and generously funded by the University of Oxford and the Margaret Thatcher Scholarship Trust at Somerville College.

I am currently the Postgraduate Representative for the Society for Early Modern French Studies (SEMFS).

Teaching and Outreach

I was educated at a state school in West Yorkshire and I care very much about access for students from backgrounds that are under-represented in the study of modern languages. In my role as Modern Languages Graduate Ambassador (2024-present), I have had the pleasure of delivering a variety of workshops and mock-tutorials for school groups and sixth-form students, on topics such as Molière's drama, Voltaire's short fiction, and Zola's novels. I have also delivered lectures and tutorials for summer schools and study days for state-school students at Pembroke College and Lincoln College.

'Comic satire and religious controversy in early modern France', Graduate Lecture Series, TT26

French FHS: VII, X - revision tutorials for undergraduate finalists, TT26

For the 2026-2027 academic year, I am occupying the post of Maîtresse de langues at Sorbonne Université (UFR de Littérature française et comparée, Faculté des Lettres). 

Publications

[Review] ‘Louis de Boissy, Théâtre, II, ed. Ioana Galleron’, French Studies 80.1 (2026), 149-150

‘‘Poésie fugitive’ in eighteenth-century Europe’, Voltaire Foundation Blog (2024) <https://voltairefoundation.wordpress.com/2024/05/23/poesie-fugitive-in-eighteenth-century-europe/>

Recent Conference and Seminar Papers

‘Jansenist Polemical Ethics: Freedoms and Constraints’, Society for Early Modern French Studies (SEMFS) Annual Conference (University of Glasgow, July 2026)

‘Les pompes du monde et les haillons du diable: Jansenist dualism and the querelle du théâtre in seventeenth-century France’, Oxford Early Modern French Seminar Graduate Showcase, (Maison française d’Oxford, February 2026)

‘‘Un trivelin qui bouffonne sur le théâtre’: Comic drama, vulgarisation, and publicity around Pascal’s Provinciales (1656-1657)’, Oxford French Graduate Seminar (All Souls College, Oxford, November 2025)