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Lecturer in American History, Queen Mary University of London

I gained my BA from Cambridge and my MA from Northwestern University before moving to Philadelphia in 2003 to do my PhD at the University of Pennsylvania.

My first book, Luxurious Citizens: Consumption and Civic Belonging in Nineteenth Century America, (forthcoming University of Pennsylvania Press) charts the creation of the citizen consumer in the US before the Civil War. It reveals how merchants, manufacturers, retailers, advertiser and shoppers themselves attempted to define civic virtue through both personal and national shopping habits, resulting in a vision of citizenship that to this day positions consumption as an American virtue and entitlement.

My new work focuses on the circulation and consumption of images of wartime violence in the Atlantic World. I am also interested in citizenship experiences for those on the political and physical margins of America in the nineteenth century.

Experience

  • –present
    Lecturer in American History, Queen Mary University of London