For Students & Collaborators
Working together
I am always glad to hear from students and researchers whose interests overlap with mine. This page sets out the areas I work in, how I can help, and a few notes on postgraduate study and funding drawn from my own experience.
Topics I’m glad to discuss
Areas where I can offer supervision, feedback, or a conversation — see further reading for the scholarship these areas draw on, and the glossary for unfamiliar terms
Victorian & nineteenth-century literature
Sensation and detective fiction, the New Woman, children’s literature and fantasy, and the relationship between literary form and industrial modernity.
Crime fiction & detection
The history of the detective figure — particularly the female detective — across British, Australian, and Bengali traditions from the 1860s onward.
Mobility & transport studies
How railways, steamships, and urban transport reshaped literary form and female agency, and how texts themselves circulated in the age of steam.
Postcolonial & decolonial studies
Bengali print culture, vernacular Victorianisms, and transnational approaches that decentre the metropolitan account of the nineteenth century.
Ways to work together
Research & reading
Conversations about a research idea, reading in Victorian or postcolonial literature, or framing a project in crime fiction or mobility studies.
Talks & panels
Invited lectures, seminars, and panel contributions on Victorian literature, female detective fiction, and colonial print culture.
Postgraduate study
Guidance on applying for doctoral study and funding, drawn from my own AHRC-funded PhD and the funding-application sessions I have contributed to.
For editing, consulting, speaking, or online English tuition, see work with me.
A note on postgraduate funding
My own doctoral research was funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) through the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities (SGSAH), and archival work in Delhi was further supported by SGSAH Engagement Funding and a Russell Trust travel bursary. I have taken part in SGSAH funded-PhD roundtables and School of English funding-application sessions, and I am happy to share what I learned about the process with prospective applicants.
If you are considering doctoral study in the humanities, it is worth looking early at doctoral training partnerships such as SGSAH, at institutional scholarships, and — for research based in India — at national fellowships such as the University Grants Commission’s Junior Research Fellowship. A well-defined project, a realistic timeline, and a clear sense of fit with a supervisor matter as much as the writing itself.
My own path to a funded PhD ran through an MPhil at the University of Delhi and several years of full-time teaching before I applied to St Andrews, so I do not assume a single or direct route into doctoral study. If your project sits across national traditions or languages, as mine does — reading British, Australian, and Bengali material together — it is worth saying so plainly in a funding application, since interdisciplinary and transnational projects can be harder to place within a single subject panel. The glossary and further reading pages set out some of the terms and scholarship a project like this draws on.
I am also glad to comment on a draft proposal or a chapter outline before it goes to a supervisor or funding body, particularly where the project touches Victorian or Bengali detective fiction, mobility studies, or decolonial approaches to nineteenth-century literature. A short email describing the project and where you are in the process is the easiest way to start.
Get in touch
If any of this resonates with your own interests, please send me a short note about what you are working on. A paragraph or two is plenty to start a conversation.
Contact me