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Profile
I came to Queen Mary in 2012 to take up a joint professorship in the Schools of History, and English & Drama. My previous post, which I had held since 1993, was in History at the University of East London. I have also held visiting professors at the universities of Amsterdam, Indiana, Notre Dame, and the École des hautes études en sciences sociales. I am the QMUL Director of the Raphael Samuel History Centre (a partnership between Queen Mary UL, Birkbeck College UL, the University of East London, and Bishopsgate Institute).
Teaching
Undergraduate Teaching
Postgraduate Teaching
Research
Research Interests:
I am an intellectual and cultural historian with a special interest in the subjective dimension of historical change. My early research focused on feminist theory and history: I have published two well-known books on early British feminism, and in the late 1990s I ran a Leverhulme-funded international research project on feminism and Enlightenment. I am the co-convenor of a long-standing seminar at the Institute of Historical Research (link is external) on ‘Psychoanalysis and History’, and have written a personal history of mental health care in the late twentieth century. I am currently researching attitudes to solitude in Enlightenment Britain.
- Feminist Theory and History
- Radical Ideas and Movements in Britain, 1790-1850
- Theories and Histories of Subjectivity
- Enlightenment Studies
- Psychoanalytic Studies
Publications
Publications since 2003
Single-authored books
- Mary Wollstonecraft and the Feminist Imagination (link is external) (Cambridge University Press, 2003)
- The Last Asylum (Hamish Hamilton, Penguin (link is external), 2014).
Co-authored books
- On Kindness (link is external) (with Adam Phillips). Penguin, 2009; Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2009.
Edited books
- Women, Gender and Enlightenment, 1650-1850 (link is external) co-edited with Sarah Knott, Palgrave Press, 2005 (pbk 2007).
- History & Psyche: Culture, Psychoanalysis and the Past (link is external), co-edited with Sally Alexander (Palgrave, 2012)
Journal Articles and Book Chapters
- ‘Mary Wollstonecraft. Sobre mujer y vida pública’ [‘Mary Wollstonecraft on Women and Public Life’], in Rosa Capel (ed) Mujeres para la Historia. Figuras destacadas del primer feminismo (link is external) (Madrid, Abada editors, 2004)
- ‘Feminists Versus Gallants: Sexual Manners and Morals in Enlightenment Britain’: in Sarah Knott and Barbara Taylor, eds, Women, Gender and Enlightenment, 1650-1850 (link is external) (Palgrave,2005)
- ‘Separations of Soul: Solitude, Biography, History’, American Historical Review (link is external), 114.3, 2009.
- ‘Marian Engel’s Bear’, Women: a Cultural Review (link is external), 21.2, 2010.
- ‘The Demise of the Asylum in Late Twentieth Century Britain’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (link is external), vol 20, 2011.
- ‘Enlightenment and the Uses of Woman’, History Workshop Journal (link is external), 74, 2012.
- ‘Historical Subjectivity’, in Sally Alexander and Barbara Taylor, eds, History and Psyche: Culture, Psychoanalysis, and the Past (link is external) (Palgrave, 2012).
Reprints and Translations
- ‘The Religious Foundations of Mary Wollstonecraft’s Feminism’, in Claudia Johnson, ed, Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft (link is external) (Cambridge University Press). Reprinted in Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (link is external), Norton Critical Edition (Deidre Lynch, ed), 2009.
- ‘Mary Wollstonecraft and the Wild Wish of Early Feminism’, History Workshop Journal (link is external), no 33, 1992; and ‘For the Love of God: Religion and the Erotic Imagination in Wollstonecraft’s Feminism’ in E Yeo (ed) Mary Wollstonecraft and 200 Years of Feminisms (link is external) (London, Rivers Oram, 1997), both reprinted in Jane Moore (ed), Mary Wollstonecraft (link is external) (London, Ashgate, 2012).
- On Kindness (Penguin, 2009): Italian, French, Spanish, German and Brazilian editions (2009-2012).
Web articles
- ‘History Workshop Journal’ (2009): http://www.history.ac.uk/makinghistory/resources/articles/HWJ.html (link is external)
- ‘History, the Nation and the Schools’ (2011): http://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/history-the-nation-and-the-schools/ (link is external)
PhD Supervision
I welcome applications from candidates wishing to undertake doctoral research in the following areas:
- British Enlightenment ideas and cultural practices
- British women’s history, especially feminist politics and writings
- Radical movements in 18th-19th century Britain
- Histories and representations of selfhood and subjectivity, especially in Britain in the long 18th century