As we start what we’re all calling “Season Two” of the website, we wanted to re-introduce key members of our team and revisit with some of our former Research Radar interviewees to find out what has changed for them (or stayed them same!) since 2021…

Who (academic or not) has shaped your critical thinking the most and why? 

Joanna Bourke was my PhD supervisor.  It has been and continues to be simply wonderful to have her in my corner.  She has such a crisp, funny, insightful way of approaching everything she’s curious about. 

The academic whose work I keep turning to these days, time and again, inside the classroom and in my own research, is the sociologist Ari Adut.  His article, “A Theory of Scandal: Victorians, Homosexuality, and the Fall of Oscar Wilde,” is probably the single piece of writing that has felt the most applicable for so many facets of my research and for the historical case studies that I explore with my undergrads.  It should be a must-read for anyone working in social or cultural history.

What are you reading for work and/or for leisure these days?

For work: I’m savouring every page of Malcolm Gaskill’s The Ruin of All Witches.  The way he sets the scene in Puritan New England, the lurking menace coming from the shadows and the landscape as well as the neighbours… it’s a masterpiece.

For leisure: I can never resist a good re-telling of a fairy tale or myth.  A good one, mind you.  Angela Carter’s The Bloody Tower has been on my shelf for decades and I loved Natalie Haynes’ The Children of Jocasta.  Last year, I discovered the A Court of Thorns and Roses series by Sarah J. Maas and I just devoured it.  It blends Beauty & The Beast, Tamlin, Hades & Persephone, and half a dozen other favourites.  I’m going to be reading the entire thing again this summer, just the way some people re-read The Lord of the Rings every year.

What podcast(s) do you recommend?

Too many, probably!  My top five (in random order):

• Not Just The Tudors
• Betwixt the Sheets
• The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge
• You Must Remember This
• In Our Time

And may I give a small shout-out to The Irish in Canada???

What is your fondest research memory?

My fondest recent research memory was when I discovered the Mary Boyd story at the British Library in Summer 2022.  I hadn’t heard of her case before and was shocked by some of the details divulged in the coroner’s court.  I might have sworn.  Loudly.  In Rare Books and Music.  My bad.

Which words or phrases do you most overuse?

“No worries” and “Nein!”  The latter has to be said loudly in order to get across the appropriate tone and quality of censure.

What book or movie changed your life?

The Rebel Angels by Robertson Davies is the best thing I’ve ever read about the romping insanity that is academia.  It’s about obsession and music and madness and shit (not kidding!), and I adore every page.  It’s even more delicious because Davies set it at the University of Toronto, which is where I did both my BA and MA, so I can visualise every scene.  I didn’t really get it when I first read it in high school – I was too young and hadn’t lived on a campus yet; years later, I read it again, and nearly ruptured something from laughing so much.

I’m a huge movie fan, so it’s really, really difficult to choose just one that has had a life-changing effect.  I love my ‘80s fantasy films, I love my Old Hollywood epics, I love some movies that are so horrifically bad they’re actually wonderful…  Instead of naming any of those, I’m just going to write down the first movie I have any memory of ever seeing, because it continues to be quite life-defining in many, many ways: The Adventures of Robin Hood, starring Errol Flynn.

Do you play music while you work?  If so, what?

I play a lot of music, but I really have to stay away from things with lyrics if I’m writing or the lyrics end up in the writing, and I’m then left trying to explain why I quoted Axl Rose in the middle of my doctoral thesis.

Things on fairly consistent rotation in 2023 include: The Band, John Barry soundtracks, The Lord of the Rings soundtrack, Fleetwood Mac, Glenn Gould playing the Emperor Concerto by Beethoven with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Michael Nyman soundtracks, the soundtrack from North & South, Bram Stoker’s Dracula & The Last of the Mohicans, Kate Bush, Max Richter, The Pet Shop Boys, the second movement to Elgar’s Second Symphony (T. E. Lawrence’s favourite!), Roxette, and The Tragically Hip.

What is your favourite way to de-stress? / What habits or hobbies support your research practice and/or allow you to destress?

Walking is a must for me.  It helps keep me sane.  I love to let down while watching a good movie or series.  I’ve also accepted that I need to be creative somehow every day, even when I’m at a point in my research and/or teaching where I can’t be writing a new article or podcast episode.  In that case, I start doing a lot of tangible things, like quilting or cooking or I write fiction, which I then put in a drawer where no one can find it for the next hundred years.

Do you work best in the morning, the afternoon, or at night?

Absolutely the morning.  I’m up most days at 4:50 a.m.  I’m really productive with writing between my first coffee at 5:30 a.m. and 11-sies.  I begin to lose steam throughout the afternoon, and you won’t get anything decent from me after 5 p.m. other than snark.

Favourite guilty pleasure while writing/researching/preparing/procrastinating?

If I’m at a desk, I’ll waste time by looking up random crap on the internet that has no bearing whatsoever on what I’m doing, but somehow seems absolutely essential in the moment.  I also fall fairly easily into watching old interviews and movie clips on YouTube.  Because, when I have a pressing deadline, what I really need to be doing is watching Richard Burton on The Dick Cavett Show, or vintage Dame Edna and Billy Connolly routines.

Also, this.  I’m either bringing that or Lawrence of Arabia to my desert island.  Hand to God.