I am a Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Aston University (Birmingham) and Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the School of Educational Sciences (Bangor). In 2022-23, I was the Megumi Visiting Professor in the English Department at Kobe College, Japan. 

I research at the intersections of Shakespeare, children's literature, and education, in and beyond the UK. For example, I have published extensively on contemporary YA vampire literature's reworkings of Shakespeare and its treatment of consent and sexual violence. A co-authored book on Shakespeare in East Asian Education was published by Palgrave, with Kohei Uchimaru, Adele Lee, and Rosalind Fielding in 2021. My first monograph, Shakespeare Valued, was published by Intellect in 2015. Full details of my research publications, including book chapters and articles, can be found on this site under the tabs 'my research' > 'research outputs'. 

In 2021, I took up the Lead Editorship of the peer-reviewed international journal Jeunesse: young people, texts, cultures (University of Toronto Press), having previously served as a member of the editorial team. In 2011, I became the Founding Editor of the British Shakespeare Association's Teaching Shakespeare, a cross-sector magazine for Shakespeare educators internationally. I oversaw the publication of 21 freely-available volumes, with readers in over 60 countries. 

I am a co-founder of the Gothic Association of Asia (GAA) website, with Li Hsin Hsu (National Chengchi University, Taiwan), Katarzyna Ancuta (Chulalongkorn, Thailand), Samantha Landau (Tokyo), Chiho Nakagawa (Nara). In September 2022, with Li-Hsin Hsu leading as local organiser, we held the inaugural GAA event: a hybrid symposium on 'Asian folklore, folk horror and the gothic' at NCCU, Taiwan.

I created the FutureLearn Pictures of Youth MOOC, a freely-available online course, exploring children's visual culture in picturebooks, comics, television and film with Dr Clémentine Beauvais in 2018. It had over 15,000 participants in four years, with above average retention. I also enjoy researching, teaching and disseminating my work internationally, in person, with extensive experience in East Asia (Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, and China, as well as Vietnam).

What unites my diverse research interests within English literature and education are my theoretical and conceptual frameworks, and research methods. These consistently draw on literary criticism; critical theory; cultural studies; literary, content and discourse analysis to analyse texts and other qualitative data (interview transcripts, posts on social media sites, and survey data, for example).

I am interested in supervising PhDs on children's and young adult literature; Shakespeare in adaptation; Shakespeare in education in the UK and internationally; as well as the teaching of literature more generally, in and beyond the English-language environments. I am most interested supervising PhD projects where the theoretical/conceptual frameworks and research methods are drawn from literary criticism, critical theory, cultural studies, literary, content and discourse analysis. N.b. These are not funded PhD opportunities.

To give prospective applicants an idea of the sorts of PhD projects I supervise, some of my previous supervisees (at the University of York) include:

• Daniel Xerri. Lead supervisor with Dr Nicholas McGuinn. Passed without corrections. January 2016. Poetry in Malta.
• Chelsea Sellars. (née Swift). Supervisor. Passed with minor corrections. July 2016. Children’s reading identities in North Yorkshire.
• Paulina Bronfman Collovati. Lead supervisor with Prof. Vanita Sundaram. Passed with minor corrections. Shakespeare for human rights in the UK. July 2019.
• Laura Nicklin. Supervisor. Passed without corrections. January 2020. Shakespeare for rehabilitation in the United States’ prison system.
• Ying Zou. Lead supervisor with Dr Clémentine Beauvais. Passed with minor corrections. April 2020. Chinese parents’ use of English language picturebooks.
• Hatice Herdili Sahin. Lead supervisor with Kerry Knox. Passed with minor corrections. June 2022. Arts Education in Turkish schools.
• Jessica Gibson. Co-supervisor with Dr Clémentine Beauvais. Passed with minor corrections. April 2023. Representations of disability in Disney films.

I am a Senior Fellow of the UK’s Higher Education Academy (now Advance HE) with a Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice (PGCAP), a higher education teaching qualification, from the University of York in 2013. I am an experienced research supervisor (see PG section below for a list of my previous PhD students and my supervisory interests). I was awarded UK Graduate Council for Education (UKGCE)-recognised research supervisor status in 2019.

Employment history

2022-23 Megumi Visiting Professor, English, Kobe College, Japan

2021-23 Senior Lecturer, Educational Sciences, Bangor University

2017-21 Senior Lecturer, Education, University of York

2010-17 Lecturer, Education, University of York

2011-19 Visiting Lecturer, Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham 

2007-10 Associate Lecturer, Open University

Qualifications

2013 University of York, Postgraduate Certificate of Academic Practice

2011 Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, AHRC-funded PhD in English 

2005 University of Cambridge, M.Phil in Educational Research

2003 University of Adelaide, B.A. (hons) 1^st Class, English major

Editorial duties 

2021- Lead Editor Jeunesse: Young people, texts, culture, University of Toronto Press, previously Editor 2020-21.

2023, Guest Editor, ‘Hot Shakespeare, Cool Japan’ issue, Cahiers Élisabéthains.

2016-21 Editorial Advisory Panel Member, Palgrave Communications, latterly Humanities and Social Sciences Communications.

2011-21 Founding Editor, Teaching Shakespeare, British Shakespeare Association (21 issues).

University-level citizenship at Bangor

2021- Member of Senate 

2021- Disclosure Response Team (School of Educational Sciences member)

2021- Sexual Violence Discloure Training and College of Human Sciences representative

2021- College of Human Sciences Representative, Research Concordat Group.

2021- School of Educational Sciences Representative, College Research Institute

Departmental citizenship at Bangor

2021- Director of Research, member of Senior Leadership Team

2021- Co-director of CIEREI (Collaborative Institute for Education Research, Evidence and Impact) with Professor Carl Hughes and Dr Richard Watkins (GwE - North Wales school improvement consortium).

2021- NSS response team

2021- Athena Swan team

2021-22  Acting Chair, School of Educational Sciences ethics committee.

2021-22 Chair, Welsh Government Collaborative Education Network (CEN) project management team.