Biography
I studied BA French and Russian and MA Early Modern Studies at UCL before starting my PhD at the University of Cambridge. My research interests span early modern women, seventeenth-century French literature, the history of exile and migration, and French and English intellectual history.
Currently I am researching Hortense Mancini and the Mazarin salon as an AHRC-funded PhD student in the French department under the supervision of Dr Emma Gilby.
My thesis explores the cultural output of the Mazarin salon and the French diaspora in seventeenth-century London. Drawing together the salon’s correspondence, publications, and performances, I investigate how confessional, national, and linguistic divides are navigated to forge a supportive literary network. Since many of the habitués were French exiles and refugees, my research examines this body of exile literature that gives rise to a thriving locus of Anglo-French exchange.
Other academic interests
Ovid and the reception of Ovid
Object theory
Publications
I have two forthcoming academic articles:
‘Like Mother, like Daughter: Hortense Mancini, Duchesse de Mazarin, and Marie-Charlotte de La Porte-Mazarin, Marquise de Richelieu’, Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Volume 16, Issue 1, Fall 2021.
‘An Epicurean Farewell: Saint-Évremond, Lucretius, and the Godolphin Manuscript’, French Studies, Volume 75, Issue 4, October 2021.
I have also published in History Today and am committed to public history:
‘Leading Ladies: The French tradition of the royal mistress gave new opportunities for women at the court of Charles II’, History Today, Volume 70, Issue 8, August 2020, pp.42-55.
Teaching and Supervisions
I teach the early modern texts on the first-year French course (FR1) including Pierre Corneille's Horace and Pierre de Ronsard's Sonets pour Helene, and I teach the entire syllabus for the second-year early modern French literature course (FR4) from Rabelais, Labé, Ronsard, and Montaigne to Molière, Racine, Pascal, and Lafayette. I have previously co-designed and co-convened the MMLL Critical Theory course on which I taught ancient literary theory, object theory, postcolonialism, and gender theory.