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I specialise in seventeenth-century French literature and history, with a particular interest in ‘libertine’ literature, the intersections between literature and the law, as well as the use of manuscript and archival sources. I have lectured at Exeter since 2017, when I first joined the department as a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow in French (2017-21). I was subsequently appointed as a Lecturer in 2021, and Senior Lecturer in 2024.

My research has received multiple international awards and prizes, as well as significant levels of funding, and is mainly concerned with early modern texts and authors considered in their day to be unorthodox, subversive, or against the laws temporal and spiritual. I work very much at an interdisciplinary level; exploring subversive thinkers and their texts from the perspectives of criminology, political history, and forensic linguistics, whilst also contributing literary analyses of legal texts and official documents to historical scholarship. These approaches are brought together in my book: Libertines and the Law: Subversive Authors and Criminal Justice in Early Seventeenth-Century France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021, 432 pp.): https://global.oup.com/academic/product/libertines-and-the-law-9780197267004?cc=gb&lang=en. Libertines and the Law was awarded the 2022 Literary Encyclopedia Book Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2023 Gapper Book Prize.

I have varied and vigorous research interests in early modern French studies. My publications cover subjects including criminal trials for blasphemy using new archival discoveries, clandestine lessons in illegal philosophy, aliens and dogmen on the Moon, pornographic poems passed between friends, a critical edition of an English translation of a French play, and women’s gossip in a lying-in chamber. I serve on the Executive Committee of the Society for Early Modern French Studies (SEMFS) as Media and Publicity Officer (see http://www.semfs.org.uk/); and am also an affiliated scholar of the Danish National Research Foundation Centre for Privacy Studies (PRIVACY, University of Copenhagen).

My teaching has received multiple awards and commendations, beginning with my time at the Université de Paris VII Denis Diderot in 2010. I convene a first-year team-taught module exploring French history through works of art, a second-year early-modern theatre module, and a final-year module on seventeenth-century libertine literature, in addition to teaching French language at all undergraduate levels. I am a fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and also hold an ASPIRE fellowship, a Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice, and a certificate from the Institute of Apprenticeships. I believe strongly in being an active and visible citizen within the department of Languages, Cultures and Visual Studies, for both colleagues and our students alike: I currently serve as Deputy Senior Tutor as well as Transition and Inductions Officer.

I welcome supervision enquiries for prospective final-year dissertations, Masters dissertations, or PhD supervision for projects within my historical period of interest.