PhD student, Jesus College
Supervisor: Nick Hopwood
Advisor: Richard McKay
Thesis: Reproductive technologies, sexuality and agency: Lesbians’ and queer women’s experiences of donor insemination in England between 1970 and 2000
Current research
Funded by the Pigott Scholarship from the University of Cambridge, my research seeks to reconstruct how queer women engaged with donor insemination in their pursuit of pregnancy amidst a hostile medical, social and political landscape in late-twentieth century England. In contrast to the majority of scholarship on lesbian practices of assisted conception, this research bridges the divide between clinical routes to conception and self-insemination by exploring both avenues and practices that fell between them.
Education
2023: MPhil Health, Medicine and Society, University of Cambridge
- My thesis, Donn Casey and the Filshie clip: A biographical and material history of a contraceptive technology, was the first historiographical account written of the Filshie clip, which grew from its inception in a garden shed in 1960s Cambridge to become a global contraceptive technology. For this research I used recently donated archival material from Donn Casey, the creator of the Filshie clip, at the University Library in Cambridge.
2021: BA History and Politics, University of Nottingham
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For my final year dissertation, Have I got to go through this every month of my life? An analysis of modern femininity through advertisements of menstrual products in England between 1920 and 1970, I conducted primary research at the Boots Archives in Beeston to explore how femininity was constructed through menstrual product advertisements and changed over time.
Scholarships and Awards
(2025- 2028) Piggot Scholarship from the University of Cambridge, which provides full funding to support the research of two PhD students per year
(2022- 2023) Rausing, Williamson, and Lipton Studentship for MPhil students
(2022- 2023) British Society for the History of Science Masters Bursary to support outstanding master’s students
(2021) Undergraduate Dissertation Award from the University of Nottingham, which recognises the most exceptional undergraduate dissertation in history