I would welcome enquiries from students interested in completing theses or dissertations on topics that would fall under the following headings: history of tourism, leisure and recreation; history of parks, parklands and landscape conservation; heritage studies; print history (1700 to 1900); historical geography; landscape history; history of the Lake District.

My research is principally concerned with 18th- and 19th-century cultural history. I am particularly interested in changing perceptions of the value of landscape and the environment during this period and in the way these perceptions were mediated by commercially produced guidebooks and topographical art and literature. My work, consequently, also engages with print history, historical geography, heritage studies and the history of tourism and leisure culture. I am also involved in research in regional, spatial and digital history. I am research centre coordinator for The Ruskin – Library, Museum and Research Centre, and I edit The Ruskin Review. I am also a member of the Pelagios Commons Committee, and I co-edit the Digital Forum for the Journal of Victorian Culture.

My career at Lancaster began in 2012, when I was hired as a research assistant on the ERC-funded Spatial Humanities project. I worked at the University of Birmingham between 2014 and 2016, when I returned to Lancaster as a Lecturer to work with colleagues as part of a Leverhulme Trust-funded project entitled Geospatial Innovation in the Digital Humanities. I completed my University education in the US. I received my BA from Penn State University in 2004 and my PhD from Stanford University in 2012.

I contribute to teaching across the Department's undergraduate and postgraduate curriculum, and I currently convene HIST107: 'Witches', Warriors, and Slavers: Exploring the History of Lancaster and HIST225: From Mining to Mountaineering: The History of the English Lake District. In addition, I oversee the Department's MA heritage pathway and our MA placement programme, which includes HIST491: Heritage and Public History Placement and HIST495: School Placement. I also supervise independent undergraduate and postgraduate research projects. 

I am a Fellow of The Higher Education Academy.