Rosemary began her PhD at Loughborough University in April 2022. Her thesis ‘Writing Women’s Work’ considers the representation of working-class women’s labour at the fin de siècle in the journalism and fiction of Margaret Harkness.
Rosemary previously completed her MA in Victorian Studies at the University of Leicester in 2021. Her MA dissertation ‘Paying the Price: Representations of Infanticide in the Nineteenth Century Novel’ won the Waddington MA Prize for English.
Rosemary’s thesis seeks to recover the writing of Margaret Harkness with a particular focus on her representation of working-class women’s labour in a variety of iterations including employment, domestic and maternal labour, and emotional and spiritual labour. In particular, it considers Harkness as sociologist, disillusioned socialist and advocate of the Salvation Army’s social action.
Conferences
‘Body and Soul: Emotional Labour in Margaret Harkness’ Fin-de-Siècle Journalism and Fiction’. Romance, Revolution and Reform Conference ‘Labour in the Long Nineteenth Century’ at Southampton University, January 2024. This paper won the prize for best PGR paper.