About
ABOUT
PhD working title: 'Creeds of Kinship: A History of Vegetarians and Other Animals in Britain, c.1850-1939'
My research seeks to recover the lives of three largely forgotten Victorian vegetarians – Edward Carpenter (1844-1929), Anna Kingsford (1846-1888) and Henry Salt (1851-1939) – in light of their encounters with non-human animals. Using an approach perhaps best described as a multispecies prosopography, I seek to use a micro-historical method to show how these vegetarians’ lives were co-constituted through these animal encounters. The choice of vegetarianism as a shared commonality between my subjects will provide an opportunity to analyse how, if at all, their emotional and intellectual understanding of the non-human world was peculiar in comparison to others during this period. It also provides a framework for how animals can be rediscovered as agents within "veg-history", something I've written more about here.
FURTHER INTERESTS
My further interests include animal studies, the environmental humanities, Victorian studies and historiography / philosophy of history. What's more, my historical approach is heavily influenced by my broader interest in phenomenology. Through a phenomenological understanding of intersubjectivity I find myself drawn to a micro-historical approach wherein individuals are given prominence. I believe this approach is also beneficial for including another exciting aspect of recent historiography, namely the history of emotions. Taking into account both the ways in which the world around historical individuals contributed to the emotional and intellectual development of these individuals makes for a more complete portrait. Following these ideas, I have a strong belief in the need for good history writing, perhaps even storytelling. Thus, history should engage with its subject's emotions, but also take interest in how it can engage the emotions of readers.
I earned a 1st class B.A. in history and politics from Loughborough University in 2020. My undergraduate dissertation focused on the patriotic pacificism of Hermann Hesse in his fiction and non-fiction during the First World War and the inter-war period. This project, along with classes in the history of political thought and the fin de siècle period, led me towards the field of intellectual history. I pursued this interest with the completion of an M.Phil. in political thought and intellectual history at the University of Cambridge in 2021. My master's research focused on Bertrand Russell's writings on liberalism and democracy. I was drawn to my PhD topic originally as an anthropocentric intellectual history, but, through my reading of historians such as Hilda Kean and Erica Fudge and animal studies more generally, I became interested in how animals were perhaps absent from the picture. Hence my own animal turn... My interests more broadly include the environmental humanities and Victorian studies.
I was born and grew up in Derbyshire, where I have been lucky enough to enjoy cycling and walking in the nearby Peak District. I love reading and I am currently engaged in reading Agatha Christie's complete stories from beginning to end. My favourite novel is the Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky. I love films, recent favourites include Dune, the Power of the Dog, and Phantom Thread. I enjoy gardening, especially gardening in service to wildlife. One of my favourite projects has been creating a wildlife pond, which serves as a habitat for pondlife and provides nectar to pollinators with its selection of native flowering emergent plants. Some of my favourite wildflowers are the ragged robin, meadow crane's-bill, and harebell. My veganism originally came about because of my concerns for the environment. However, over time, my veganism has found surer footing in my better understanding of the scale of animal suffering in the world today.
