On completing my doctorate on anarchism in late nineteenth-century French and English literature at Oxford University, I worked as a researcher on the scholarly edition of the 'Œuvres complètes de Voltaire' ('Complete Works of Voltaire') at the Voltaire Foundation in Oxford. After returning to Australia, I taught and researched at several universities, including the University of Adelaide, the University of Melbourne, Monash University and the University of New England. I have been involved in a number of research projects funded by the Australia Research Council, including the Baudin Legacy project, a project on 'The Political Thought of Enlightenment Women' and have been a Chief Investigator for the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions. My research lies mainly in the area of French literature from the the eighteenth century to the twentieth century and I am also interested the history of the French exploration of Australia.

• a translation of a novel by Colette for the Oxford World's Classics series
• a biography of the French botanist Théodore Leschenault, who came to Australia with the Baudin expedition of 1800-1804
• a project on French literary culture in colonial Australia

Voltaire and Rousseau
Eighteenth-century women's writing
The nineteenth-century French novel
The French exploration of Australia, 1770-1820