About Alexandra

Alexandra is a historian of Britain and early America, specializing in art and material objects from the early modern period to the beginning of the nineteenth century. She received both her BA (Honours with Distinction) and her MA in Art History and Visual Studies from the University of Victoria and holds an MA in History from William & Mary. She is currently working on her dissertation project which uses four case studies – brewing, cooking and preserving, dyes and textiles, and pigments and paints – to explore maker’s conceptions of time in the long eighteenth century, from 1660 through 1830.

Alexandra’s work has been supported by numerous museums, institutions, and funding bodies including the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture (OI), the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA), the Decorative Arts Trust, the American Philosophical Society, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Hagley Museum & Library, the North American Conference of British Studies (NACBS), the Mid-Atlantic Conference of British Studies (MACBS), the New England Regional Fellowship Consortium, the Huntington Library, the American Antiquarian Society, and Winterthur Museum, Library & Gardens. In the 2023-2024 academic year she will be the Barra Material Culture Dissertation Fellow at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

Alexandra has held research, curatorial, and digital humanities positions in both Canada and the United States. Her writing appears in print often, having been published in the Magazine of the Decorative Arts Trust, on the Uncommon Sense – The Blog, the Georgian Papers Programme blog, and on the American Philosophical Society Blog.

Alexandra has experience in higher education teaching and assessment. She taught at the undergraduate level at the University of Victoria in the department of Art History & Visual Studies and at the College of William & Mary in the History department. Most recently she developed and taught “The World of Goods: Consumer Cultures 1750-1950” which explored the development of consumer society in Britain, the United States, and Canada.

Header Image: Panel of Chinese wallpaper, about 1750 – 1800, China, Victoria & Albert Museum