MY RESEARCH

I’m interested in places and people on the edges of society, in particular those who are marginalised, excluded and forgotten. I investigate the systems and processes and socio-cultural structures that create these edges, and what that looks like in both life and death. I’m interested in chaotic cities, the dark currents that run beneath them, and the networks of institutions that keep them afloat. I’m interested in the early origins of modern medicine and policing, and how discriminatory and exploitative ideologies can become insidiously absorbed into everyday life.

My research has led me to study human zoos, hospitals, hysteria, asylums, prisons, pauper cemeteries, spiritism, post-mortem photography, urban alienation, carceral architecture, death management, morgues, crime scenes, forensics, suicide, illegal cadaver trading, true crime, tabloid culture and much, much more.

I am currently completing my PhD in History at King’s College London, where my thesis explores the nineteenth-century morgues of Paris and New York. When we think of morgues today, we imagine discreet, medical spaces; waiting rooms between the worlds of the living and the dead. But the earliest modern morgues of the nineteenth century had multiple functions, ranging from identifying anonymous bodies found in the streets and the river, to advancing anatomical study, forensic science and criminology. The most famous of these was the Paris morgue, a popular tourist attraction visited by tens of thousands every day, eager to see the dead bodies on public display. A duplicate morgue was soon established in New York, in order to manage the growing problem of the unclaimed and unidentified urban dead in the American metropolis.

My project explores the history, significance and legacy of these two ‘sister’ morgues. More than just popular attractions or receptacles for the dead, these overlooked institutions played a key role in the development of modern medicine, forensic science, and early policing. Drawing upon a wide range of source material including annual morgue registers, photography, contemporary newspapers and even fabric swatches, this innovative research not only contributes to our understanding of modern science, medicine and policing, but reveals how these morgues also tell an untold story of medical exploitation and abuses, enforcing social hierarchies, moral panic, and the deliberately blurred line between being poor, and being a criminal.

Alongside my PhD, I am currently developing both academic and public-facing research on the legacies of pauper cemeteries, the unexplored history of crime scene photography, and the role of imagery in US abortion politics. I was recently shortlisted for the 2024 BBC New Generation Thinkers.

Academic CV

2020 - 2024: PhD Candidate in History - King’s College London

Thesis (working title) - Death as an institution: managing the anonymous dead at the morgues of Paris and New York, c. 1864-1914.

Funded by: The Royal Historical Society | Economic History Society | Scottish International Education Trust | Historians of the Twentieth Century United States | The Reid Trust | Society for the Study of French History | British Association for American Studies | British Society for Historians of Science | Chalk Valley History Trust | British Association of Nineteenth-Century American Historians | The Royal Society

2017 - 2019: MA (Distinction) in Urban History - University of London Institute in Paris

Dissertation - Medicine, morality and the anonymous dead: The Paris Morgue, 1864-1907

Funded by: ULIP Nathan, Quinn & Edmond Scholarship.

2009 -2013: BA (2:1) in History & French - University of Manchester

Dissertation: Visible Evidence of Invisible Phenomena: Photography, Science and Spiritism in Late Nineteenth-Century Paris.