I research British literary history of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with a focus on interfaces between literary production and the history of science and media. Particular interests include the relationship between literature and practices of knowledge production in other fields (antiquarianism, historiography, natural history, and medicine); the history of the book and cultures of print; literature and the visual arts; literature and ecology.

I am currently completing a book on novelists’ engagement with the material practices and media experiments of antiquarians in the long eighteenth century (contracted to Oxford University Press). Together with Noah Heringman and Crystal B. Lake, I’m working on a digital edition of the eighteenth-century antiquarian print series Vetusta Monumenta. Vicky Mills and I co-edited a special on media history and material artefacts for Word & Image. My articles on the history of the novel, material culture, and book history have appeared in Modern Philology, Studies in the Novel, SEL, Word & Image, Victorian Review, Textual Practice, and a number of essay collections.

My first monograph, Charles Dickens and the Sciences of Childhood (Palgrave Macmillan’s Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture Series, 2013) explored the medical institutions, scientific entertainments, debates and print cultures that revolutionised how the Victorians understood childhood. I have also edited a volume entitled Bodies and Things in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture (2012) and co-edited, with Stephan Karschay, a special issue on Gothic Ecologies from the eighteenth century to the present.

• Visiting Research Fellow, Faculty of English, University of Cambridge (2024-25)
• Visiting Scholar, Jesus College, University of Cambridge (2024-25)
• Elected Research Associate, Darwin College, University of Cambridge
  (2016-17, 6 months)
• Junior Fellowship, Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS) (2013-14)
• Visiting Postdoctoral Researcher, English Department, Rutgers (2012-13)

• Habilitation Award, Universität Regensburg (2019)
• Award for Excellence in Teaching, Fakultät für Sprach-, Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaften, Universität Regensburg (2015)
• Elected Junior Fellow of the Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften & Elected Member of the Junges Kolleg (2014)
• Elected Fellow of the Young Academy of Europe (2014)
• Elected Member of the International Association of University Professors of English (2014)
• Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Humanities, Volkswagen Stiftung (2012-13)
• Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, DAAD (2012-13, declined)
• PhD Scholarship, Gerda Henkel Foundation (2007-2009)
• Robert's Grant, King's College London (2009)
• Student-led Initiative Award, British Arts and Humanities Research Council (2008-2009)
• Postgraduate Scholarship, School of European Languages and Cultures, University of Kent (2005-2006)
• Scholar of the German National Academic Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes) (2003-2007)

• Elected Member of the Executive Board of the International Association of Professors of English (2018-)
• Elected Chair of the Junges Kolleg, Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften (2017-19)
• Referee for Cambridge University Press; Routledge, Palgrave Macmillan, Victorian Review, Nineteenth Century Studies, Victorian Periodicals Review, Textus, Entertext, Gaskell Journal, Victorian Network