Research
Research
My thesis addresses the ways in which women of the middling sort engaged with the production, use and transmission of Natural Knowledge in the latter half of the long eighteenth century, through their domestic and educational activities and their participation in public events. It investigates the intersection between Natural Knowledge and everyday household enterprise, the impact of print material and networks of sociability, and the ways in which women constructed their ideas of the natural world through visits to proto-industrial sites and attendance at science lectures and demonstrations.
My research draws on a range of sources including recipe books, diaries, correspondence, directional manuals, material objects, newspapers and periodicals and is supported by a WRoCAH Doctoral Fellowship funded by the AHRC.
My broader research interests include newspapers/newspaper culture in eighteenth century Jamaica and the impact of gender and religion on eighteenth century ideas of embodiment. I also have a longstanding interest in the interface between archives and the public. In 2021, I wrote and directed a series of short films based on mass observation-style interviews gathered by Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree for his study English Life and Leisure (1951) as part of a Jane Moody Scholarship. In 2022, supported by WRoCAH, I created a range of resources encouraging families and children to engage with the contents of Burton Constable Hall’s Cabinet of Curiosities.
