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I am a third year PhD candidate working under the supervision of Dr. Sandra den Otter. My research interests include nineteenth-century Britain, the British monarchy, gender, print culture and media, and mental health. My current project studies nearly 100 individuals who intruded on Queen Victoria's privacy over the course of her reign (1837-1901), and whom we would today call "stalkers." I am interested in studying the ways these intrusions and the media coverage they received factored into broader debates about gender, mental illness, policing, and the public's relationship with and reconceptualization of the British monarchy.

Since January 2024, I have been working as a research assistant for the SSHRC-funded project Thinking Historically for Canada's Future. My role involves conducting historical and socio-political analyses of social studies curriculum from Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut. 

I am also pleased to serve as a regular contributor to Synapsis: A Health Humanities Journal for the 2024-25 academic year. 

You can follow Rachel's academic research on Instagram: @royalintruders. 

Publications 

"'My Kindest Albert Read to Me': Jane Austen's Novels and Queen Victoria's Domestic Bliss." Persuasions (forthcoming). 

"." Broadsides (blog), North American Conference on British Studies, 21 June 2024. 

Conference Papers 

"'Another Visitor to the Palace': Gender, Mental Illness, and Intruders on the British Royal Family's Privacy, 1837-1900." Paper presented at the 22nd Annual Women's and Gender History Symposium, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois (online), 3 March 2024. 

"'Another Candidate for Royal Audience': Gender, Rights of Access, and Queen Victoria's Stalkers in the Media, 1837-1840." Paper presented at the Northeast Conference on British Studies, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 14 October 2023. 

"'The ¾ÅÐãÖ±²¥ Last Lunatic Lover': Mental Illness in Popular Representations and Memories of Queen Victoria's Stalkers, 1837-1841." Paper presented at the 20th Annual McGill-¾ÅÐãÖ±²¥ Graduate Conference in History, Kingston, Ontario (online), 29 April 2023.