Degree(s)

BA Linguistics and English Literature (University of the Witwatersrand), MA Linguistics (University of the Witwatersrand), MSt English Language (University of Oxford), DPhil English (University of Oxford).

Research interests

I study the history of English dictionaries from 1600 to the present, and in particular their changing representations of socially marginalized people and language varieties. This takes me into a number of fields, including lexicography, sociolinguistics, the history of English, slang, world Englishes, language and gender, language and sexuality, and the history of literary censorship. I am currently working on a project with Prof Charlotte Brewer (University of Oxford) to digitize the correspondence of Sir James A. H. Murray, the first editor-in-chief of the Oxford English Dictionary (https://www.murrayscriptorium.org/).

Teaching Interests

On the English Tripos, I teach Part II, Paper 9, ‘Love, Gender, Sexuality: 1740–1824’. On the Linguistics Tripos, I teach Part I, Paper 4, ‘History and Varieties of English’.

Publications

For an up-to-date list of my work, see my faculty page