Research

I am currently working on several related projects. I am interested in the ethics of representation, particularly in creative representations of modernity’s violent histories. I am also interested in associated questions of relationality, touch and care, and how these shape writers’ approaches to research and creative form. Recent articles have appeared in parallax, Women’s History Review, The Senses & Society and the Journal of Postcolonial Writing.

I am completing my first book Reading Frictions: Memory, Violence and the Politics of Touch in Contemporary World Literature. Building on research that I started during my PhD, the book discusses representations of intertwined histories of modern violence. It explores whether contemporary writers’ engagements with touch generate new possibilities for resistance and relationality. It focuses on writers including Katja Petrowskaja, Teju Cole, Han Kang, and Claudia Rankine.

With Dr Ruth Daly, I co-edited a special issue of parallax ‘Reading Otherwise’, which offers a series of in-conversations on decolonial feminisms today. In response to my previous role as Curator at the German Historical Institute, I am also developing work on the ethics of curation and the future of the museum.