Degrees

BA in History of Art and Architecture (St John’s College, University of Cambridge), MPhil in History of Art and Architecture (St John’s College, University of Cambridge), PhD in History of Art (St John’s College, University of Cambridge).

Research interests

I specialise in the art and architecture of Tudor and Jacobean Britain, with particular interests in visual modes of communication and their relationships with other art forms such as literature and music. My first book, Tudor Liveliness: Vivid Art in Post-Reformation England was published by the Paul Mellon Centre/Yale University Press in 2023. It explores sixteenth-century ideas about artistic ‘liveliness’ or vividness and the way these manifested in visual art and material culture, including portraits, book illustration, tapestries, wall-paintings and household objects. My current projects include a trade non-fiction book about art in Tudor England, and academic research on relationships between visual art and music in Elizabethan culture.

More broadly I am interested in the visual and material culture of Northern Europe, c.1100-c.1700; artistic exchange and contact between Tudor England and other cultures; temporality in art; museum and exhibition curation; the philosophy and theory of art and aesthetics, and the value of the arts and humanities in society.

Teaching interests

I am an experienced lecturer and supervisor. For the History of Art Department at Cambridge I have taught the following papers: Part II Tudor Visual Culture; Part I Meaning of Architecture from Antiquity to the Present; Part I Meaning of Art; Part I Study Skills, and Part II Approaches to the History of Art and Architecture, a paper focusing on art theory/the history of ideas as applied to art.

I am a Course Tutor at the Institute for Continuing Education at Madingley Hall, and I teach public lecture courses for the Wallace Collection among other institutions. I also supervise undergraduate dissertations in the History Faculty. In 2018-2019 I took part in the Teaching Associates’ Programme at the University of Cambridge, and am an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (AFHEA).

Awards and prizes

Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (2022)

Paul Mellon Centre Postdoctoral Fellowship (2022)

Church Monuments Society Essay Prize (2021)

British Journalism Awards – Finalist in the Arts and Entertainment Category (2021)

BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker (2019)

AHRC Student Development Fund Award (to cover part-time Curatorial Internship at the National Portrait Gallery, London 2017-2019)

Arts and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Training Partnership Award (2015-2018)

George Daniels Educational Trust Award (2014-2015)

Whytehead Scholarship and College Prize for History of Art, St John’s College, Cambridge (2014)

Larmor Award, St John’s College, Cambridge (2014)

Publications

Tudor Liveliness: Vivid Art in Post-Reformation England (London: Paul Mellon Centre and Yale University Press, 2023)

‘Vivit Post Funera Virtus: The Elizabethan and Jacobean Monuments in Gonville and Caius College Chapel, Cambridge’, Church Monuments Journal 36 (2021)

‘Horology Verbalised, Horology Visualised’ in Anthony Turner, ed., A General History of Horology (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2021)

‘Two Newly Discovered Anatomy Flap Engravings by Thomas Gemini’, Print Quarterly (September 2020)

‘Lively Limning: Presence in Portrait Miniatures and John White’s Images of the New World’, British Art Studies, special issue on miniatures (September 2020)

‘“it seemeth to be the thing itsefe”: Directness and Intimacy in Nicholas Hilliard’s Portrait Miniatures’, Études Épistémè, no.36 (2019) online at:

https://journals.openedition.org/episteme/5292

‘Tudor Time Machines: Clocks and Watches in British Portraits, c.1530-c.1630’, Renaissance Studies vol. 33, no. 2 (April 2019) pp.239-266: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/rest.12517

‘Portrait Miniatures by Hilliard and Oliver’, Apollo CLXXXIX, no.673 (March 2019) pp.134-139:

https://www.apollo-magazine.com/english-portrait-miniatures/

Nine catalogue entries incl. ‘Young Man Among Roses’; ‘George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland’; ‘Thomas Bodley’; ‘Christopher Hatton’ in Catharine Macleod et al, Elizabethan Treasures: Miniatures by Hilliard and Oliver (London: National Portrait Gallery, exh. cat., 2019)

(as Christina Farley), Guide to St Vincent's Parish Church, Caythorpe, Lincolnshire, (Heritage Lincolnshire, 2017) ISBN: 9780948639678. Winner of the Society for Lincolnshire History and Archaeology's Flora Murray Award for Excellence, 2017.

‘Waltham Abbey Panelled Room, Essex', Transactions for the Essex Society for Archaeology and History, 4th ser., vol. 7 (2016), pp.211-223.

Other interests

I play the violin and viola and love playing chamber music. I enjoy making art, especially ceramics and embroidery, and I write ghost stories.