The Haunted Surface: The Material Conditions of Spectrality in Victorian Drawing (Working Title)
My doctoral research investigates nineteenth-century British drawing as a distinctively Gothic medium, uniquely attuned to the spectral: the ghostly, the apparitional, and the uncertain. Rather than treating the spectral solely as iconography, my project explores how drawing’s materials and processes served as a potent site for negotiating experiences of haunting and absence in nineteenth-century Britain, a period defined by Spiritualism, occult inquiry, and fascination with the supernatural. My research aims to develop a material and art-historical hauntology, offering new insights into Victorian spiritual and occult practices as deeply entangled with the textures and materialities of everyday life.
This project is supervised by Dr Caroline Levitt, advised by Dr Tom Young and supported by the Tavolozza Foundation. Alongside my academic research, I work at the Ashmolean Museum (University of Oxford) and have held roles at the National Gallery, Sotheby’s, and Phillips, delivering complex projects across valuations, research, and digital engagement.
Research Interests
- Hauntology & Spectrality
- Nineteenth and Twentieth-century British drawings
- Nineteenth-century artists’ materials, with a particular emphasis on paper
- British folklore, magic and the occult
- Victorian Gothic
- History of Belief
- Material Culture
Publications
- ‘Kindred Spirits: Reframing Elizabeth Siddal’s A Woman and a Spectre’, The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies, ns 34, Fall 2025 (Toronto: York University), pp. 4–19.
- ‘Substrate, Spectre, Subtraction: The Material and the Macabre in Rossetti’s Early Drawings’, The Journal of the British Association of Paper Historians, No. 137 (London: The British Association of Paper Historians), January 2026, pp. 1–5.
- ‘In the Shadow of Certainty’, in The Visual Commentary on Scripture, ed. by Ben Quash (London: The Visual Commentary on Scripture Foundation), September 2025.
- ‘The Raven (c.1848) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti’, online catalogue entry (London: Victoria and Albert Museum), September 2025.
Conference Papers
- ‘When Text Becomes Trace: Drawing as Threshold in Rossetti’s Works after Poe and Goethe’, Beyond the Threshold: Liminal Spaces and the Gothic Imagination, The Netherlands Research School for Literary Studies, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands, February 2026.
- ‘Material Hauntings: The Sensory Afterlife of Rossetti’s The Raven’, Beyond the Visual: Full Body in British Art History – Past, Present and Future, Association for Art History Autumn Symposium, London, October 2025.
- ‘A Visual Séance: Materializing the Spectral Imagination in Pre-Raphaelite Drawings’, Folklore and the Senses, The Folklore Society Annual Conference in collaboration with the Department of Folklore and Ethnology, University College Cork, Ireland, June 2025.
Grants & Awards
- Tavolozza Foundation PhD Scholar, 2023–2029
- Eve Borsook Legacy Fund, 2025
- Friends of the Courtauld Institute Fund, 2025
- UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), 2024, 2025
- Association for Art History, 2024, 2025
Memberships & Affiliations
- Association for Art History
- British Art Network
- British Association for Victorian Studies
- Courtauld Institute Graphic Arts Group
- Emerging Researchers in British Art
- Hauntology & Spectrality Research Group (York St John University)
Education
- MA Christianity & the Arts, King’s College London in association with the National Gallery (2017–2018)