The Courtauld Institute of Art

Department Member, Art History

Andrew W. Mellon Research Forum Postdoctoral Fellow

About

Currently I am the Andrew W. Mellon Research Forum Postdoctoral Fellow at the Courtauld Institute of Art. My research engages with the Gothic Revival, intellectual culture and university architecture, British identity and aesthetics from c.1800-1950, and the intersections of space, theology and cultural geography. I am especially interested in British architects working abroad in the Victorian era, music and architectural theory, the impact of religion on art and architecture in critical discourse, and the persistence of the Gothic style in post-Victorian Britain. Following postgraduate qualifications in theology and art history, I completed my PhD on George Frederick Bodley’s Victorian architectural designs for Oxford and Cambridge in 2011 at the Courtauld Institute of Art.

I lecture widely to academic and non-specialist audiences on topics in art and architecture ranging from queer methodology to colour theory. I have taught undergraduate and postgraduate courses at the Courtauld Institute of Art, Eckerd College, Warwick University and King’s College London. Topics include Victorian London, art as a theological medium, the Aesthetic Movement, medievalism and the Gothic Revival, issues in British modernity from 1750-1950, methodologies for art history, and queer perspectives on nineteenth-century European painting.

In 2009, Laura Cleaver and I co-convened Gothic and Its Legacies at the Courtauld’s Research Forum. This international conference brought together a diverse range of emerging scholars to assess the impacts of Gothic art and architecture between c.1600 and 1950. In 2011, Caroline Levitt and I co-convened Intersections: Architecture and Poetry. This two-day Courtauld Research Forum conference featured contributions from artists, poets, architects and academics from four continents and broke new ground in interdisciplinary interpretations of space and poetics.

I have also given numerous talks to diverse audiences on A. W. N. Pugin, John Ruskin, G. F. Bodley and Watts & Company, George Gilbert Scott, William Morris, Victorian artists’ houses, British approaches to the decorative arts, sound sculptures, British church architecture, London’s parks, Michelangelo’s drawings, Toulouse-Lautrec’s images of Jane Avril, Victorian textiles, Cezanne and cinema (and a few other topics, some of which are even relevant to my PhD) at the V&A, RIBA, the Courtauld Gallery, the National Gallery, Context, Love Art London, and elsewhere. In addition to my academic publications and ongoing research, I have written for the Burlington Magazine, World Architecture News, Art and Christianity, the Architects' Journal, Jotta Magazine, Arts Professional Magazine and Whitehot. I also run Watch This Space (www.heartchitecture.wordpress.com), a blog offering unusual perspectives on architecture.

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