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.

I’m interested in places and people on the edges of society, in particular those who are marginalised, excluded and forgotten. I investigate the systems and processes and socio-cultural structures that create these edges, and what that looks like in both life and death. I’m interested in chaotic cities, the dark currents that run beneath them, and the networks of institutions that keep them afloat. I’m interested in the early origins of modern medicine and policing, and how discriminatory and exploitative ideologies can become insidiously absorbed into everyday life.

My research has led me to study human zoos, hospitals, hysteria, asylums, prisons, pauper cemeteries, spiritism, post-mortem photography, urban alienation, carceral architecture, death management, morgues, crime scenes, forensics, suicide, illegal cadaver trading, true crime, tabloid culture and much, much more.

I have a PhD in History from King’s College London, where my thesis investigated the morgues of Paris and New York from 1864-1914. I now hold a Visiting Research Fellowship at the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine at KCL (2025-2028). Alongside my first non-fiction trade book, 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.

academic 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.

• ‘Crime Scene Photography in the Twentieth Century’, The Routledge History of Crime in America, eds. Vivien Miller & James Campbell (Routledge, 2024)

• ‘Ghosts in the Archive: A History of Haunting’, The Palgrave Handbook of New Directions in the Ghost Story Vol.2, eds. Joan Passey & Henry Bartholemew (Palgrave, 2025).

  Find out more about my upcoming non-fiction book morgue here. I am also currently working on a co-written journal article on NYPD crime scene photography of abortion investigations in 1920s-1940s New York.

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’

consultancy

From hunting down nineteenth-century architectural plans in New York, medical diaries in London and spirit photography in Paris (among many other things), I’ve got extensive experience in libraries, archives and historic sites across the USA, UK and France. I’m also adept at finding niche information (and long-lost people) in online archives and newspaper records. To date, I’ve provided consultation for a diverse range of projects from around the world including:

• Demonstrating visual indicators of body decomposition in water for a film producer in LA

• Staging an accurate nineteenth-century American autopsy for an opera in Zurich

• Reconstructing a private doctor’s morgue at a museum in Savannah, Georgia

My areas of research expertise are broadly within the fields of social and cultural history, in particular policing, death, crime, mental health, institutions (prisons, asylums, workhouses, morgues), gender, society, poverty, photography and medicine. I’m open to dabbling in fringe cultures such as cults, spirit mediums and the paranormal, too (who isn’t?).

I speak English and French, and I’m available for projects internationally.

academic cv

2025 - 2028: Visiting Research Fellow

Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine (CHoSTM) at Kings College London

2020 - 2024: PhD in History - King’s College London

Thesis - 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 (HOTCUS) | The Reid Trust | Society for the Study of French History | British Association for American Studies (BAAS) | British Society for Historians of Science | Chalk Valley History Trust | British American Nineteenth-Century Historians (BrANCH) | The Royal Society

Viva: passed with no corrections in March 2025.

Examined by Dr John Troyer (University of Bath) and Dr Mara Keira (University of Oxford).

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.