I work on histories of violence, experience, and memory in the British empire. Here are some of my current and former projects.
Book Project: My ongoing book project is tentatively titled Little World Wars: Multi-War Experiences in the British Empire, 1885—1918. Based on my doctoral dissertation, it is the first academic history of Britons who fought in both late-19th century colonial wars and, later in their lives, the First World War. I use the diverse lives and experiences of multi-war veterans to draw connections between things that public and private memory have managed to keep separate - things like the Victorian world and the twentieth century, the world wars and the colonial conflicts that proceeded them, and British military history and Britain’s African colonies.
“Kitchen Window Feminism: Sarah Macnaughtan, Wartime Care, and the Authority of Experience in the South African and First World Wars,” in “Health, Healing, and Caring,” special issue, Gender & History 33, no. 3 (Oct. 2021).
Sarah Macnaughtan, a wealthy novelist, used volunteer care work to claim the legitimacy of her wartime experience in the South African and First World Wars and to assert women's rights in the early twentieth-century British empire. Macnaughtan framed her caregiving experiences in both inherently domestic terms – ‘from a kitchen window’ – and as a justification for women's suffrage and participation in public life. Her example loosens a persistent binary between trained nurses and untrained wartime volunteers and highlights the importance of precedents set in the British empire to the feminist politics and caring practices of the First World War.
European Studies and Digital Humanities, edited spotlight section of EuropeNow (April 2022).
This feature in the online magazine of the Council for European Studies highlights examples of the many ways that European Studies scholars engage in the digital humanities. I commissioned, edited, and introduce the feature.