I lecture in Critical & Historical Studies at Kingston University, teaching the history and theory of illustration and animation. As a researcher, I work on the history of British comics in relation to cultures of resistance and dissenting social movements, with a particular interest in the performative aspects of cartooning, as a mode of drawing and storytelling, and the politics of performance thereby invoked. Publications include the monograph Alan Moore, Out from the Underground: Cartooning, Performance and Dissent which looked at the role of the arts lab movement, underground press and punk scene on the British comics artist and writer.
With my colleague Caoimhe Mader McGuinness, I am working on an interdisciplinary research project on Cartoon Theatre, an approach to performance that emerged in the alternative theatre movement of the mid-1960s to early 1990s, which appropriated cartooning as a visual mode and the structure and iconography of comics as part of a wider attempt to construct a reimagined popular political theatre embedded in the social/liberation movements of the period. We were very grateful to receive a Society of Theatre Research grant to visit relevant archives to support funding applications for this project.