About
I work on the history of modern Britain, with a particular interest in women’s history, student histories, and the history of medicine. My first monograph, Postnatal depression in postwar Britain: Women, motherhood, and social change (MUP), examines how the challenges of mothering were made visible after the Second World War. My current research, for my second monograph, Student Mental Health in Modern Britain, explores the history of student mental health.
I am a co-editor of the journal Twentieth Century British History. Together with Sarah Kenny I am currently co-editing the Routledge Handbook of Contemporary British History, which is under contract and due for publication in 2026. I am the director of the GENCAS (the Centre for Research into Gender and Culture in Society), an interdisciplinary research centre at Swansea University.
I regularly contribute to BBC History Magazine, and my writing can also be found in Times Higher Education and the Fabian Review.
I have held grants from the Wellcome Trust, the AHRC, and the ESRC. I am currently a Co-Investigator on U-Belong, a multi-million-pound Medical Research Council project that is taking an interdisciplinary approach to understanding student loneliness.
Before taking up a lectureship at Swansea I was the Sir Christopher Cox Junior Fellow at New College, University of Oxford. I completed my PhD at Queen Mary University of London after doing a Mst in Women’s Studies at Keble College, Oxford, and an undergraduate degree at the University of Sussex.
Outside academia, I wrangle my small children and bake (badly). I will be on maternity leave in Spring 2024.