My research and teaching focus on relations between art and literature in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century France, and on artists' writings in a range of periods and contexts. My books in these fields are Savage Tales: The Writings of Paul Gauguin(Yale University Press, 2019) and Aesthetic Rivalries: Word and Image in France, 1880-1926(Peter Lang, 2012). Other recent and forthcoming publications include 'Cubism and Silence' in The Cubism Seminars(CASVA /Yale University Press, 2017), 'Gauguin's Alter-Egos: writing the other and the self', in Gauguin's Challenge: New Perspectives After Postmodernism(Bloomsbury Academic, 2018) and an essay on the reception of Picasso's poetry. I am currently beginning a project on life writings by women artists.

I hold a BA in French and Italian literature from the University of Oxford and an MA and PhD from The Courtauld Institute of Art, London. I was previously a Junior Research Fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge, and a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at The Courtauld. I have been a member in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (2014-15), and a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, Washington, DC (2018).

I welcome enquiries from potential postgraduate students with interests in nineteenth- and twentieth-century art, literature, and artists' writings.

Recently completed PhD students

Maria Golovteeva, 'Fernand Khnopff: Art and Photography in the Nineteenth Century'