About Me

Academic Profile

I am a medievalist and cultural historian of museums, libraries, and archives, working across periods from the twelfth to the twentieth century. My work addresses the political, social, and epistemological values behind the collection and preservation of medieval books and records, the impact of such processes on the public and scholarly memory of the medieval past, and the use of that memory in shaping modern religious, social, and political identities. My PhD interrogated the construction of the ‘national’ value of medieval illuminated manuscripts by examining their circulation within the London rare book market of the early twentieth century. Adopting a material approach to medieval books, I demonstrated that many manuscripts acquired their status as 'national’ heritage objects in the process of their acquisition by a central institution such as the British Museum, reframing the understanding of when, how and by whom heritage objects are deemed to have developed representative value. I am also highly experienced in using the documentary sources of medieval history. My work on medieval Scottish and Anglo-Norman law and the exercise of royal and aristocratic power through charter diplomatic won the Elizabeth Levett Memorial Prize from King’s College London. My master’s thesis, a critical edition of the charters of Adeliza of Louvain establishing her as the first dowager queen of Anglo-Norman England, is in press with the Anglo-Norman royal charters project at the University of Oxford.

My research bridges medieval studies with modern theoretical approaches to collecting and national identities.

Research Interests

  • Medieval Manuscript Studies
    • Codicology and Material Culture
    • History of Collecting
    • Manuscript Circulation
  • Museum Studies
    • National Heritage Formation
    • Institutional History
    • Collection Development
  • British Cultural History
    • Early 20th Century
    • Imperial Period
    • Nationalism Studies
My work examines how medieval manuscripts transformed from historical sources into embodiments of national identity.

Current Research

My current project investigates the politics and practicalities which informed the collection of medieval records at the Public Record Office (PRO - now the National Archives) upon its foundation in the 1830s. The foundation of the PRO was part of a larger programme of significant reform by the British state to expand its administrative authority over domestic affairs and colonised territories. The PRO was tasked not only with acquiring departmental records of the newly departments, but also with collection, arrangement, and publication of backdated records of English government, particularly those of the medieval English state. These documents had not previously been stored in any single central repository, rendering them disorganised and inaccessible. Prior to the early nineteenth century, there was little sense of a distinct category of ‘the public records’, and certainly none believed to reflect the historic structure of the state. Drawing on theories of collecting practice from anthropology, sociology, and art history, this project asks whom the central accumulation of these records was intended to benefit – the state, scholarship, or a more broadly defined ‘public’?

Current Positions

  • New Chaucer Society Fellow at the Huntington Library, 2026-27
  • Historian and Heritage Officer, Stoll Foundation

Academic Background

  • Ph.D. - School of Advanced Study, University of London
    • “Collecting the Nation: National Identity and the Circulation of Medieval Manuscripts in Britain, 1900-1939”
    • Supervisors: Prof. Laura Cleaver and Prof Julia Crick
    • Awarded 2025
  • M.St. Medieval History - University of Oxford
    • “Queenship and Widowhood in the Early Twelfth Century: The Acta of Adeliza of Louvain”
    • Supervisors: Prof. Stephen Baxter, Prof. Richard Sharpe, David X Carpenter
    • Awarded 2016
  • B.A. History (Hons) - King’s College London
    • “A Distinct Scottish Tradition? Patterns of Attestation and Charter Diplomatic in the Witness Lists of David I”
      • Supervisor: Prof. Alice Taylor
    • “Confronting the Conquest: The Propagation and Subversion of Norman Hstory in Orderic Vitalis’ Redaction of the Gesta Normannorum Ducum”
      • Supervisor: Prof. Julia Crick

Awards and Fellowships

New Chaucer Society Fellowship at the Huntington Library, 2026-7

Isobel Thornley Research Fellowship, Institute of Historical Research, University of London 2024-5

Keith Sambrook Scholarship, Institute of English Studies, University of London, 2021

Elizabeth Levett Memorial Prize, King’s College London, 2015

Research Impact

My work contributes to multiple fields:

  • Historiography of medieval Britain
  • Medieval art history
  • Museum studies
  • Nationalism studies
  • History of collecting

For research inquiries or collaboration opportunities, please contact me.