I am a specialist in late medieval English and European art and architecture, with research interests extending into the sixteenth century. I joined the Courtauld Institute after a career in the City of London and, later, in the charity sector. After studying for the Courtauld Graduate Diploma, I completed an MA in medieval art and a PhD at the Courtauld (which was supervised by Dr Tom Nickson and submitted in 2025).
My thesis, entitled ‘The Hales Monument in Canterbury Cathedral: Ships, Commemoration and New Knowledge in the Late Sixteenth Century’, explored ideas of Elizabethan identity and commemoration, particularly with regard to contemporary engagement with the sea and with the image of the ship. It unveiled the story of the creation of the ground-breaking Hales monument, which features a sculpted sea-burial scene, juxtaposed with a landscape painting (an iconography unique in sixteenth-century English funerary art), and its installation within a royal chapel in Canterbury Cathedral. While academic study has tended to treat funerary monuments as distinct from other classes of visual and material culture, the thesis situated the Hales monument within its broader cultural context. It explored the monument’s innovative features in relation to new systems of knowledge, expanding geographical and intellectual horizons and alongside new forms of imagery and image-making associated with topography and maritime technology. The thesis also questioned why ship imagery was such a rare feature of funerary art of this period, in contrast with its popularity in other areas of art and material culture, at a time of burgeoning global maritime enterprise, exploration and naval warfare with Spain. Examining this disparity, and questioning what it can reveal about contemporary attitudes and emotions regarding seafaring, the thesis contributed to recent reassessments of maritime histories.
Education
PhD, The Courtauld Institute of Art (submitted 2025)
MA History of Art, The Courtauld Institute of Art (2019-20), Awarded Courtauld New Direction Scholarship. Special Option: ‘England Europe and Beyond: Art, Identity, Trade and Politics in the Middle Ages’
Dissertation: ‘The Chantry Chapels of Cardinal Beaufort and Bishop Waynflete in Winchester Cathedral’ (Awarded Sam Fogg Prize for a Pre-1500 Dissertation Topic, 2020)
2018-19 Courtauld Graduate Diploma in the History of Art
1983-86 Oxford University MA (Hons) English Language and Literature
Research Interests
Late medieval art and architecture (including continuities and disjunction and iconoclasm in the 16th century following the Reformation)
Travel, ships and the sea
Chantry chapels, death and funerary art and commemoration in the 15th and 16th centuries
Art of trade, encounter and politics (including maritime art)
Publications
‘The Chantry Chapels of Cardinal Beaufort and Bishop Waynflete in Winchester Cathedral’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 175 (2022) – (Awarded Reginald Taylor & Lord Fletcher Essay Prize)
