I started my academic career with an MA in English Literature, Modern History and Spanish / Latinamerican Literature & Culture at the University of Saarbruecken in Germany (1998), which I followed with my PhD on literary and cultural representations of the English Gentleman in the twentieth century at the University of York in 2004. Since October 2002 l had already been working as Lecturer in Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century English and European Literature at the University of Derby, a position I held until summer 2009 when I came to Portsmouth.
My teaching is strongly informed by my research. I co-ordinate the Level 5 unit 'Nation & Travel' which focuses on national identity, in particular Englishness, and the Level 6 option 'Holocaust Literatures' which examines a cross-section of commemorative writing on the Holocaust, ranging from survivor to second-generation accounts, and 'perpetrator' writing to fictional engagement with the Holocaust. On this latter topic I have recently organised a major international conference dedicated to 'Trauma & Memory: the Holocaust in Contemporary Culture' which took place here at the Centre for Studies in Literature in July 2013.
