Staff profile

As a PhD candidate in the Department of English studies, I am writing a thesis about the influence of Catholic social teaching on a number of nineteenth-century convert writers, including Lionel Johnson and Frederick Rolfe. My research is primarily concerned with Church history and its impact on the Decadent imagination, as well as the political tensions of the fin de siècle. My studies are funded by a Von Hügel Scholarship and jointly supervised by Dr. Laura McCormick Kilbride and Dr. Martin Dubois.

I pursued my BA and MA in English at Durham University, where I wrote dissertations on Catholic theology in Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun and in the poetry of Lionel Johnson, Ernest Dowson and Lord Alfred Douglas. During my MA, I was awarded the Raman Selden Prize.

I am a member of the Centre for Catholic Studies, at which I presented a conference paper on 'Monasticism in the Poetry of Lionel Johnson and Ernest Dowson' in 2025. 

I welcome any queries about my research interests, which include Decadence, Catholicism and literature, and literature and theology more generally. 

Member of the Centre for Catholic Studies (CCS), Dept. of Theology & Religion