historical research
My academic research broadly focuses on the themes of urban death, policing, medicine, forensics, crime and photography from the nineteenth-century to the present day. My PhD thesis is on the morgues of Paris and New York from 1864-1914, and I am currently working on projects relating to the history of crime scene photography, an exploration of morgues as a creative muse, and the management of the unknown dead at American pauper cemeteries.
I am available for public talks, lectures and historical consultancy work internationally.
PODCASTS & BROADCASTING
My research has recently featured on:
PUBLIC TALKS
2024
LONDON: The Paris Morgue: A Dark and Deadly History - 7pm GMT February 5th 2024 for the Last Tuesday Society at the Viktor Wynd Museum (get tickets here SOLD OUT)
2023
NEW YORK / ONLINE: Drop Dead Gorgeous: Fashion, Photography, and the Crime Scene Aesthetic - 6pm EST on Monday May 1st 2023 for Morbid Anatomy (get tickets here)
LONDON: The Paris Morgue: Dark Tourism, True Crime and Morbid Medicine - 7pm GMT March 13th 2023 for the Last Tuesday Society at the Viktor Wynd Museum (get tickets here SOLD OUT)
NEW YORK / ONLINE: The Morgue As A Muse: Art, Aesthetics and the Anonymous Dead - 7pm EST on Monday January 30th 2023 for Morbid Anatomy (get tickets here)
2022
LONDON: The Paris Morgue: Dark Tourism, True Crime and Morbid Medicine - 1.30pm GMT on Sunday October 23rd, 2022 for London Month of the Dead at Brompton Cemetery Chapel (get tickets here)
PARIS: The Paris Morgue as a Muse: Art and Inspiration Among the Anonymous Dead - 10.30am CEST on Saturday October 15th, 2022 for Morbid Anatomy at the Musee Fragonard d’Alfort (get tickets here)
PUBLICATIONS
‘Rethinking New York’s “dark shadow”: managing the unclaimed dead on Hart Island, 1869 to the present day’. Architecture_MPS. Vol. 23(1), September 2022.
FORTHCOMING:‘Crime Scene Photography in the Twentieth Century’, The Routledge History of Crime in America, eds. Vivien Miller & James Campbell (Spring 2024)
CONFERENCE PAPERS
2023
BrANCH 2023 at Queen’s College, University of Oxford - September 22-24, 2023:
Paper title: ‘From Sinner to Statistic: Investigations into Suicide in Gilded Age New York’
2022
UNC-KCL Transatlantic Conference 2022 at University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill - September 19-20, 2022:
Paper title: ‘Medicine, Manipulation and the Anonymous Dead: Exploring the uses of the body at the Morgues of Paris and New York’
HOTCUS Annual Conference 2022 at the University of Edinburgh - June 20-22, 2022:
Paper title: ‘The invention of immortality: photography at the New York City Morgue’
Keynote Panel Presentation: ‘Beyond the Back-Alley Butcher: Constructing Abortion’s Criminality through NYPD Crime Scene Photography, c.1928-1945’
UNC-KCL Transatlantic Conference 2022 at King’s College London - May 11-12, 2022: "
Paper title: ‘Medical Authority and Manipulated Bodies at the Morgues of Paris and New York’
BrANCH 2022: Nineteenth-Century America in Atlantic Context at the Kinder Institute, University of Missouri - April 7-9, 2022:
Paper title: Death Across the Pond: Managing the Unclaimed Dead at the Nineteenth-Century Morgues of Paris and New York’
Imagining The Dead: Capturing The Dead in Art and Culture as part of the Grave Matters Online Seminar Series - April 4, 2022:
Paper title: ‘Photographing the Dead at the Paris Morgue’
2021
HOTCUS PGR/ECR Conference : Medicine, Disease, and Disability in the Twentieth Century United States (Online) - September 5-6, 2021:
·Paper title: ‘Policing the dead in the modern metropolis: the case of Hart Island, New York.’
AMPS: CITIES IN A CHANGING WORLD: QUESTIONS OF CULTURE, CLIMATE AND DESIGN at City Tech, CUNY, New York / Online- 16-18 June, 2021:
Paper title: ‘Managing New York’s Unclaimed Dead, 1868 – Present Day’
Until Death Do Us Part: Historical Perspectives on Death and Those Left Behind, c.1300-c.1900 at Royal Holloway, University of London / Online - 15-16 April, 2021:
Paper title: ‘“The gathering place of sin and death”: social order and public perception at the Paris morgue’
ACADEMIC CV
2020 - 2024: PhD Candidate in History - King’s College London
Thesis (working title) - Death as an institution: managing the anonymous dead at the morgues of Paris and New York, c. 1864-1914.
Funded by: The Royal Historical Society | Economic History Society | Scottish International Education Trust | Historians of the Twentieth Century United States | The Reid Trust | Society for the Study of French History | British Association for American Studies | British Society for Historians of Science | Chalk Valley History Trust | British Association of Nineteenth-Century American Historians | The Royal Society
2017 - 2019: MA (Distinction) in Urban History - University of London Institute in Paris
Dissertation - Medicine, morality and the anonymous dead: The Paris Morgue, 1864-1907
Funded by: ULIP Nathan, Quinn & Edmond Scholarship.
2009 -2013: BA (2:1) in History & French - University of Manchester
Dissertation: Visible Evidence of Invisible Phenomena: Photography, Science and Spiritism in Late Nineteenth-Century Paris.