PGR supervision: Dr Nick Freeman & Dr Sarah Parker
Aaron received a BA in Classical Civilisation and Philosophy from the University of Nottingham in 2013. As an undergraduate he was a course rep and received a BP Ambition Award.
From 2015 to 2017 he worked as an English Instructor at ECC Language School, Japan. He taught English to students of all ages at schools and businesses in Tokyo, Yokohama, Kawasaki and Hashimoto.
Aaron attained an MSt in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge in 2017. His dissertation was entitled ‘The Suicide Note of Thomas Unwin’ and explored the concept of literary forgery and the genre of jisei, or ‘death poem’.
In 2018 Aaron completed an MA in Victorian Studies at the University of Leicester where he was awarded a Waddington Scholarship. His dissertation, ‘“The Apostle of the Sunflower”: A Study of Oscar Wilde’s Use of Floral Imagery’, won the Professor Philip Collins Prize. Aaron served as Postgraduate Rep for the College of Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities and was a voting member of the Students’ Union Council.
Aaron is a committee member of the Oscar Wilde Society, UK. He is the editor of the society’s regular e-newsletter and editors’ assistant for both The Wildean and Intentions.
Aaron is currently writing a PhD thesis on the ways in which Oscar Wilde’s sexuality was defined and portrayed by biographers, commentators and critics in the period between his death in 1900 and the passing of the Sexual Offences Act, 1967.
Professional Memberships:
- British Association for Victorian Studies (BAVS)
- British Association of Decadence Studies (BADS)
- British Association for Japanese Studies (BAJS)
- Oscariana: The Oscar Wilde Society Newsletter, Nos. 40-72
- ‘The Herald of the Helianthus: Oscar Wilde and Sunflower Symbolism’, The Wildean, 57 (July 2020), pp. 56-75
- ‘Review: Kimberly J. Stern: “Oscar Wilde: A Literary Life”’, The Wildean, 57 (July 2020), pp. 130-135
- ‘Review: Gregory Mackie, “Beautiful Untrue Things: Forging Oscar Wilde’s Extraordinary Afterlife”’, Romance, Revolution and Reform: The Journal of the Southampton Centre for Nineteenth Century Research, 2 (January 2020), pp. 148-152.
- ‘Classic Spring: A Symposium’, The Wildean, 54 (January 2019), pp. 106-117, with Darcy Sullivan, Michael Seeney and Iain Ross.
- ‘Tall Stories: “The Canterville Ghost”’, Intentions, 107 (August 2018), pp. 21-23.