I am an Early Career Research Fellow in Education at Fitzwilliam College. I grew up in Basingstoke, Hampshire, and worked for the public library service for several years before joining academia. My research is at the intersection of children’s literature and childhood studies; queer studies; HIV/AIDS sociology; and the study of aesthetics, culture, and pedagogy. I am particularly interested in the role of melodrama as a framework for public memory in popular culture, especially regarding HIV/AIDS. My research has been published in the Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, the European Journal of Cultural Studies, and several other journals and venues.

I am working on two books. The first is a young adult nonfiction project: a history of HIV/AIDS in the United States, co-written with David Levithan. This book will be published by Random House in 2025. At the same time, I am preparing a monograph which expands my doctoral research on the representation of HIV/AIDS in texts for young people from the mid-1980s to the present day. This project argues that HIV/AIDS-related children’s and YA literature is an important but under-examined archive which deserves greater scrutiny within the larger cultural history of the epidemic.