My research surveys the history and theory of art and design in Britain from the eighteenth century to the present day. While centred on historical themes, my approach to research and teaching encourages the application of theoretical perspectives from, for example, material culture, consumerism, anthropology, philosophy and aesthetics. My research interests explore the interconnected relationships between natural history, natural philosophy, and the fine arts. In 2018, I published a monograph: William Hunter and his Eighteenth-Century Cultural Worlds: The Anatomist and the Fine Arts, Routledge/Taylor & Francis, an anthropological-cultural biography of the work of Dr William Hunter, founder of the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow. My research is centred on the material traces and archival records of early collections of objects in the arts and sciences, previously contained within private ‘cabinets of curiosities’, from the Enlightenment era. Previous publications include studies of naturalists and artists, such: Thomas Pennant (1726-1798) and George Stubbs (1724-1806), (Anthem Press, 2017) and Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820), (Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 2020). Alongside these interests, I have edited a volume of essays on the subject of historical interiors and their related exteriors, from contemporary perspectives; considering the ways in which architectural, decorative and landscaped schemes of the past are refashioned and remade for present-day audiences. The volume, Reassembling the social interior: historical spaces from contemporary viewpoints, was published by Manchester University Press, Studies in Design and Material Culture, in 2025. Natural history, the natural sciences, design and fine art are also the focus of a future book project, The House of the Naturalist, which explores the homes, environments, and social networks, belonging to the famous naturalist and long-serving president of the Royal Society, Sir Joseph Banks. The book places Banks as the central figure in a study of eighteenth-century interiors and environments created to support and facilitate the production of knowledge of natural history and experimental sciences. Specifically, the book will reassess Banks’s close involvement with architects, artists, and designers during the period, and consider his contribution to the fine and decorative arts, and emerging industrial arts and manufactures, pertinent to understanding aspects of creative culture in the present day. The book has developed from my current research interests in reimagining and reconstructing interior spaces of the mid-late eighteenth-century, particularly the homes of early scientists in London, many of which are no longer in existence, their furnishings, artworks, and collections dispersed or disappeared. As a critical anthropological-cultural study, the book centres on the lived experiences of Banks and his immediate colleagues within the domestic settings of homes and houses belonging to him and his powerful family and friends.
Alongside this specialism in historical subjects and themes, I am currently conducting research within the field of contemporary design in jewellery and other craft-based disciplines, artificial intelligence and immersive technologies. In October 2026, I will co-present a paper, with my GSA colleague, Silvia Weidenbach, at the international conference: 'Jewellery: Making Art with Body Matter (20th and 21st Centuries)', hosted by the Institut national d'histoire de l'art, in Paris. This conference paper, entitled: 'Performing post-digital ornament: matter and meaning in jewellery objects through AI, AR and VR technologies' addresses reinterpretations of historical ornament through immersive technologies, and explores ideas of 'matter' as meaning making in the present day, and in relation to histories and philosophies of technology more generally. The paper is part of an ongoing research project on the significance of ornament, decorative arts, and making, in a post-digital era.