Welcome,

My name is Kerry.

Though I have worn many hats in my career thus far, I am currently a doctoral researcher/historian with the National Trust and Open-Oxford-Cambridge Doctoral Training Partnership.

My thesis explores how extra-European objects and commodities shaped the lives of Restoration courtiers, through the lens of the Anglo-Scottish power couple the Duke and Duchess of Lauderdale and their remarkable property Ham House.

On a day-to-day basis, I trawl through the Restoration-era inventories collated for the Duchess, trace the amount of nutmeg, sugar, or cinnamon consumed, read bills and letters documenting the Duke’s love of Virginia tobacco, or stare intently at cabinets of glimmering Japanese lacquer, polychromatic Chinese screens, and some of the earliest surviving examples of British chinoiserie.

This project is the culmination of an academic career focused on the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’ social, global, and colonial histories.

Scroll down to see the latest summaries of my work in my blog and a summary of my historical projects thus far.