Conferences and Talks

Invited Talks (Selected)

‘“Pageants of Buckram and Pasteboard”: Antiquarian Practices and the Historical Imagination in the Long Eighteenth Century’, Guest Talk co-hosted by the Centre for Material Texts and the Eighteenth-Century and Romantic Studies Seminar, University of Cambridge, 6 March 2025.

‘Tangible Pasts: Antiquarian Culture and the Novel in the Eighteenth Century’, Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture Research Seminar, University of Oxford, 25 February 2025.

‘“The Frusts, Crusts, and Rusts of Antiquity”: Laurence Sterne and the Eighteenth Century’s Obsession with the Past’, Jesus College, University of Cambridge, 20 February 2025.

‘“Pregnant Materials for Future Times”: Antiquarian Conjecturing, Material Culture, and the Historical Novel’, London-Paris Romanticism Seminar, Senate House, London, 13 December 2024.

‘“Things have crowded in so thick”: Laurence Sterne, Quixotic Antiquarianism and the Printed Book’, Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies, University of York, 3 December 2024.

‘Antiquarian Quixotes: Fabricated Pasts in the Works of Laurence Sterne and Charlotte Lennox.’ English Department Research Seminar, King’s College London, 7 March 2017.

‘Crafting the Past in Sarah Scott’s Millenium Hall.’ Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies, University of York, 17 January 2017.

‘Vetusta Monumenta: Picturing the Past in the Eighteenth Century.’ Birkbeck Eighteenth Century Group, Birkbeck College, 7 December 2016.

‘Antiquarian Culture and Historical Representation in Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy.’ Early Modern Studies Network, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, 4 October 2016.

‘Antiquarian Fieldwork, Domestic Tourism and the National Past in William Stukeley’s Itinerarium Curiosum and Daniel Defoe’s Tour.’ North East Forum in Eighteenth-Century and Romantic Studies, University of Newcastle, 26 February 2016.

Keynote Lecture: ‘Hopeful Monsters: Victorian Science and Culture.’ Conference: Victorian Body Parts, Birkbeck College, University of London, 14 September 2013.

‘The Material Histories of Antiquarian Feeling.’ Research Colloquium, History of Emotions Research Group, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, 11 September 2012.

‘Childhood in Early Novels by Charles Dickens.’ Victorian Research Seminar, English Department, University of Oxford, 10 November 2007.

Organisation of Conferences, Workshops and Sessions

Date	Conference
12/2025	Conference: ‘Spoliation, Damage, and the Ecological History of Paper’, University of Passau. Co-organized with Emily Senior and James Wood.
07/2025	Conference: ‘Paper Ecologies: Histories, Materialities, Experiments’, University of Passau. Co-organized with Vicky Mills and Luisa Calè.
07/2024	Conference: ‘Books In and Out of Time II: Genres and Formats of Media History’, University of Passau. Co-organized with Vicky Mills and Luisa Calè.
12/2023	Symposium: ‘Literary Afterlives and Material Culture in the Long Eighteenth Century”, University of Passau.
07/2023	Conference: ‘Books In and Out of Time I: Media, History, and Print Culture 1700-1900’, University of Passau. Co-organized with Vicky Mills and Luisa Calè.
06/2023	Conference: ‘Soil – Dirt – Earth: Ecologies below Ground, 1750-1850’, University of Passau. Co-organized with Paul Hamann-Rose and Frederike Middelhoff.
01/2020	Session, "Theorizing Antiquarian Practice: Material Culture, Visual Epistemologies, and the Production of Historical Knowledge", BSECS, St Hugh's College, University of Oxford.
09/2019	Conference:‘Anthropocene (Post)Humanities’, Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, München.
07/2019	Session ‘Knowledge in Transit: Romantic Print Networks and the Circulation of Knowledge’, 15th International Congress on the Enlightenment, Edinburgh.
02/2019	Symposium, Study Day and Round Table: ‘Objects of Wonder: The Global Lives of Things in the Long Nineteenth Century’, Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, München
09/2017	Conference, co-organised with Anne-Julia Zwierlein, Jochen Petzold, and Martin Decker: ‘Anglistentag 2017’, Universität Regensburg.
02/2016	Conference: ‘Present Pasts: Historical Consciousness and the Experience of Modernity’, Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, München.
07/2014	Conference: ‘Mediating History’s Materiality, 1700-1900’, Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS), Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg
09/2013	Conference: ‘Traveling Objects: Eighteenth-Century Culture and the Matter of History’, Center for Cultural Analysis, Rutgers University (funding: VolkswagenStiftung)
01/2013	Session ‘Material Culture and Phenomenologies of Time, 1760-1815’, 128th MLA Annual Convention, Boston.
11/2011	Conference, co-organised with Anne-Julia Zwierlein (Universität Regensburg): ‘The Cultural Politics of Aging in the Nineteenth Century’, Universität Regensburg.
05/2008	Conference, co-organised with Jo McDonagh (King’s College London): ‘Street Life: Victorian Culture at the Crossroads’, English Department, King’s College London
09/2008	Conference, co-organised with Rosemary Tate: ‘Bodies and Things in Victorian Literature and the Matter of Culture’, English Department, University of Oxford.