I work on the history of the English language and its intersections with society and literary culture from 1500 to the present. I have particular interests in 18th-century and Romantic British literature, lexicography, sexuality, gender, slang, and print censorship. My first book, Before the Word Was Queer: Sexuality and the English Dictionary, 1600–1930, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2024. My current research projects are on:
- Philology and sexuality in Britain from 1700 to 1840, especially in the writing of Anne Lister, Byron, and Hester Lynch Piozzi.
- The manuscript revisions of A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785) by Francis Grose, one of the first standalone dictionaries of English slang.
- The making of the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary from 1859 to 1928. With Prof Charlotte Brewer, I am co-editing a digital edition of the correspondence of Sir James A. H. Murray, the first editor-in-chief of the OED (MurrayScriptorium.org).
Although my research focusses on English from the early modern onwards, my teaching stretches back to Old and Middle English. During the 2024–25 academic year, I am teaching Prelims Paper 1A ‘Introduction to English Language’ and FHS Course II Paper 4 ‘History of the English Language to c. 1800’.
