I joined Clare as a Junior Research Fellow in English and Philosophy in October 2021. My first degree was a Bachelor of Philosophy in philosophy. More recently, I completed a PhD at Cambridge (2018-2021). I research topics in literature and philosophy, with a special emphasis on aesthetics, political philosophy, and theories of the novel. My current research project explores modern and contemporary novels that are associative and essayistic in form—what I describe as ‘constellational novels’. In a similar vein, I’m also interested in philosophical discussions of affinity, likeness, resemblance, analogism, similarity, and what are sometimes called ‘what is it like’ statements.  

In addition to these research interests, I write on Australian literature in venues like the TLS and have recently co-edited The Cambridge Companion to the Australian Novel. The Companion provides a clear and lively account of the complex histories and crucial present of the Australian novel, and covers subjects such as contemporary First Nations literature in Australia, sexuality in the novels of Patrick White, and fiction in the climate crisis. I also write poetry. In Australia, my poems have won the Australian Book Review’s Peter Porter Prize and been anthologised in Best Australian Poems and Best of Australian Poems, while in the UK, I’ve published poems in the PN Review and the TLS. At Cambridge, I’m on the steering committee of the Judith E Wilson Centre for Poetics.  

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