Woke up to wonderful news: my first book review is out in Russian Review! So honoured, the reviewer highlighted how the book uses Pavlovsk Park to trace Maria Feodorovna's political agency, drawing on sources rarely used this way before. Link - onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

1/ New article out in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art: "Reclaiming Danila Vassilieff— Hybrid Objects in the Artistic Production of an Australian Cossack," with Bronislava Prakhiy and Ksenia Radchenko. A thread on the argument :

Biocultural Empire offers a new anti‑colonial framework for understanding imperial power and knowledge. 📖 https://bit.ly/3Rf2AFu 🔓 https://bit.ly/4cZAAwW

1/ Presenting at AHA2026 Wednesday 1:30–3pm @ Macquarie Uni, sharing new research from a book project with Dr Emma Gleadhill: Napoleon's Australian Afterlife. Napoleon never set foot in Australia. His myth absolutely did.

1/3 What can a damaged, seemingly ordinary sabre tell us about diplomacy? On 3 July I'll be speaking at the ANU Mongolia Institute about Prince Bambar's sabre, a diplomatic gift awarded by Catherine II and later presented to the Qianlong Emperor.

1/ During a visit to Pavlovsk, I came across this engraving by J.A. Roy in the collection of Empress Maria Feodorovna. The sitter, Prince Alexander Kurakin, looked visibly injured. Since portraits of wounded or sick people are rare, I decided to investigate.

1/4 What can a missing root tell us about Imperial Russia? This botanical plate from Hortus Pavlovskiensis (1816) omits the roots entirely. That was deliberate. Following Linnaean principles, the artist focused on flowers, fruits, and seeds—the reproductive structures used to classify plants.

Women, Gardens, and Agency in Imperial Russia: Empress Maria Feodorovna's Pavlovsk Park by @ekaterinaheath.bsky.social reveals how royal gardens became tools of female power, diplomacy, and influence at the Russian court. Discover the book 👉 https://bit.ly/4tbZ4tE

My book is officially out today! Women, Gardens, and Agency in Imperial Russia: Empress Maria Feodorovna's Pavlovsk Park — exploring how a royal consort used her garden as a tool of political power in imperial Russia. www.bloomsbury.com/au/women-gar...

An advance copy of my book has arrived! After years of research, writing, archival work, and thinking about gardens and power in Imperial Russia, it feels very special to finally hold it in my hands.

1/This is a drawing made by a 17-year-old named Nikolay Ivashentsov, who would go on to become a celebrated illustrator of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and Gogol's Dead Souls. The drawing's power lies entirely in the story behind it.

1/4 Thread: In the lead-up to my book on Pavlovsk, I’ll share small objects and documents from the archive. First: a child’s letter from Maria Fedorovna’s daughter, Alexandra, to Catherine the Great, about mushrooms.

1/9 On Fridays I get to work on something that excites me, the 19th century Russian war artist Vasily Vereshchagin. He's one of art history's paradoxes: a war artist who became one of the most powerful antiwar voices.

1/2 Join me in person or on Zoom for a talk on Prince Bambar’s ceremonial sabre as a work of art moving across Russian and Qing worlds, revealing how objects produce meaning, mediate power, and destabilise imperial narratives. @PowerInstitute 2 April, 3–4:30pm

1/2 How did diplomacy work across the steppe? Sometimes through objects. Looking forward to presenting on Bambar’s sabre as a diplomatic gift moving between empires at New Research on Diplomacy in Pre-Modern Eurasia on the 6th of March.

1/2 One sabre. Several empires. From imperial gift to war trophy, Prince Bambar’s blade crossed Russian and Qing worlds, reshaping its meaning each time. Join me for this research seminar at the Power Institute: 2nd of April, 3:00PM - 4:30PM Schaeffer Seminar Room and online

Good to see my work with Emma Gleadhill on weeping willows and Napoleon’s memory in Australia being taken up in Dubbo Photo News: www.dubbophotonews.com.au/news/how-nap...

1/2 Just received the latest issue of History, the magazine of the Royal Australian Historical Society, in the mail, with Napoleon’s grave on the cover and our article on Napoleonic willows in Australia inside.

1/2 Yesterday I spent a wonderful day at a plant-dyeing workshop at Hazelhurst Gallery with the artist Nicole Barakat. I’ve wanted to do this for many years, and it was every bit as fun as I imagined.

I have a soft spot for children's books. I had a wonderful time at Pamela Allen's exhibition at the State Library of NSW, and especially liked her images of Sydney.

1/2 New article published! Co-written with Dr Emma Gleadhill, this piece traces how Napoleon’s wish to rest beneath Australian acacias was replaced by the weeping willow as a symbol of mourning, and how this botanical myth spread across Australia and back to St Helena.

1/2 First book proofs! Women, Gardens, and Agency in Imperial Russia is finally becoming real. This project asks us to look beyond sovereigns and recognise how a non-regnant consort like Maria Feodorovna used gardens to intervene in politics.

1/2 Bessie Davidson is another artist who stood out. Forgotten in Australia (she never returned), she made her mark in France with luminous interiors. As a feminist, she elevated overlooked spaces like nurseries and domestic interiors as part of the fight for equality.

1/ I recently visited the Dangerously Modern exhibition at the Art Gallery of NSW, and I was completely blown away. So many fascinating women artists were uncovered during its preparation, their stories largely forgotten until now.

1/8 Excited to share my review of Rosalind Blakesley’s "Women Artists in the Reign of Catherine the Great" in the latest issue of Slavonic & East European Review. Link - muse.jhu.edu/pub/427/arti...

My copy of "Napoleonic Objects and Their Afterlives" has arrived! My chapter with Emma Gleadhill follows the Napoleonic collection Dame Mabel Brookes assembled in the early 20th century, now quietly housed in the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery.

Call for Papers – Voltaire in the Baltic World: Circulations, Receptions, Legacies Our colleague Sophie Turner is organising this exciting conference in Tarttu, Estonia, next year, which the Voltaire Foundation is supporting. www.voltaire.ox.ac.uk/news-item/ca...

1/ While in Townsville for a conference, I was excited to discover the Wedgwood exhibition I’d quietly been hoping to see, and yes, I slipped away to visit. Here are a few highlights from a truly wonderful experience.

1/ This Wednesday at 9am at the AHA in Townsville, I’ll be presenting a collaborative paper with Dr Emma Gleadhill on the history of Napoleonic willows in Australia. It’s a story about memory, misidentification, and botanical imperialism.

A lovely surprise: my book "Women, Green Spaces and the Politics of Empowerment in Imperial Russia. Empress Maria Feodorovna's Pavlovsk Park" is now listed in the publisher's online catalogue! www.bloomsbury.com/au/women-gre...

1/3 In 1975, Dame Mabel Brookes left the National Gallery of Victoria 380+ Napoleonic items — objects, letters, furniture, prints. She built the collection to link her family to Napoleon on St Helena and inscribe them into world history.

🧵1/7 I'm so excited to share that my article with Emma Gleadhill, "Making Napoleonic Memory in Australia: the Dame Mabel Brookes Collection," has just been published in Napoleonic Objects and their Afterlives, edited by Matilda Greig and Nicole Cochrane.