Roles and subjects
Nelson J Carr Career Development Fellow for Academic Skills Support
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Academic background
I read English and Comparative Literature at the University of Warwick (2015), then worked in library systems and academic integrity at the University of Reading, before moving to Oxford for an MSt in Medieval English Literature (2017) and subsequently a DPhil in Old English and Latin literature (2021), both at Wolfson College. Since then I have taught at undergraduate and graduate level at seven different Oxford colleges, the English Faculty, and the Humanities Division. I have taught broadly across the Medieval period (with a particular interest in pre-conquest literature); Latin language; contemporary literary theory (with particular interests in queer theory and translation studies); and history of the English language.
I joined Jesus College in 2024, and am honoured to be the inaugural Nelson J. Carr Career Development Fellow. This post is generously funded by Jesus College alumnus Mr Christopher Richey (1984, MPhil Management Studies) and the Richey Family Foundation. This role grants me vital time for my postdoctoral research alongside developing and delivering academic skills support for Jesus students, especially those who join the College from disadvantaged backgrounds or without English as a first language. To read more about the creation of this role, please click here.
Academic skills support
I offer Academic Skills support (Learning Development) to all undergraduate and postgraduate students. I work in partnership with students and subject tutors in order to help students to succeed and thrive during their time at Jesus. I also work closely with the Academic Director and Academic Registrar in order to establish new Learning Development initiatives within the College.
I offer one-to-one, group study and workshop sessions in all aspects of academic skills training, including time management, academic writing, effective academic reading, and revision techniques. Students can either self-refer or be referred by their tutors.
Research interests
My research broadly considers ideas of the world in medieval literature. In particular, I am interested in how writers and scholars from early medieval England (650-1100) were thinking about places outside of England, and how they saw their relationship to the global world around them. To this end, my interests largely move between the interrelated areas of translation between Latin and the vernacular; pre-modern national and international identity; and medieval travel. I am also interested in questions of interconnectivity, inclusivity and intratextuality in medieval works, especially in collections of saints’ lives.
My first book Translating Europe in Ælfric’s ‘Lives of Saints’ (OUP, 2024) examined England’s relationship with its European neighbours in work by Ælfric of Eynsham (c. 955–1010), the most accomplished English writer before Chaucer. In this work, I argued that Europe constituted a vital part of Ælfric’s teaching at a time of national crisis. I have also published on Ælfric’s representation of India and Rome, on his use of Latin sources, and on his translation practices.
My current work looks beyond Europe to the global world. To this end, I am working with one of the most extensive examples of vernacular encyclopedic writing in the entirety of the European Middle Ages, the ninth century text known as the Old English Martyrology – sometimes conceptualised as ‘medieval Wikipedia’! What interests me most about the OEM is the interrelation between its whole and its parts. I am interested not only in how medieval English writers were describing African and Asian places, but also in how they made sense of the globe as an entity; and in how that relationship between individual places and global whole is made manifest in the text’s synthesis of diverse sources, ideas, languages, genres and saints into a single coherent work.