“See East and West linked in their best’: Henrietta Barnett and the Whitechapel Fine Art Loan Exhibitions (1881-1898).” Plenary Speaker. Conference on “Radical Victorians.” Yale Center for British Art, Yale University (26-28 March 2020).
“Ruskin for Whitechapel.” Invited Speaker. Conference on “John Ruskin: Prophet of the Anthropocene.” Reilly Center for Science, Technology and Values, Notre Dame University (7-8 February 2020).
“Art on Sundays: Henrietta Barnett and the Whitechapel Fine Art Loan Exhibitions.” Conference on “Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites: Sacred Conversazioni.” St. Michael and All Angels Chapel, Marlborough College (21-22 September 2019).
Symposium on “Victorian Women’s Writing: Pasts, Presents, and Futures.” Birkbeck Center for Nineteenth-Century Studies, University of London (22 March 2019).
“A Crisis of History: Poverty, Progress, and Practicable Socialism.” Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Atlantic Cultures Workshop, University of Chicago (7 March 2018).
“‘How to Observe’: Charles Eastlake and a New Professionalism for the Arts.” Symposium on “George Scharf and the Emergence of the Museum Professional in Nineteenth-Century Britain.” National Portrait Gallery, London (April 2015).
“Culture and Which Way of Life?” Birkbeck Nineteenth-Century Research Seminar, University of London (March 2013).
“Of Beauty, Virtue, and Interest.” Aesthetics Discussion Group, Department of Philosophy, University of Michigan (April 2011).
Symposium on “Nydia, The Blind Girl of Pompeii.” Contexts for Classics: Objects as Texts Series. University of Michigan Museum of Art (January 2011).
“Democracy Redux? Tocqueville, Mill and the Politics of Interest.” Conference on “The Idea of America in Nineteenth-Century British Culture, 1776-1914.” Institute of English Studies, University of London (June 2008).
“Interactions/Interventions: Women, Art and Criticism.” University of Michigan and Cranbrook School of Art (March 2008).
“The Dream of a Common Beauty: William Morris and the Politics of Interest.” Department of English Research Seminar, Queen Mary, University of London (December 2005).
“‘But can we be sure that Things are at all like our Feelings?’ Walter Pater and the Language of Inner Sense.” Fin de Siècle Seminar Series, 1870-1920, English Faculty, University of Oxford (February 2005).
“From Common Good to Physical Usefulness: Shaftesbury, Ruskin and the Victorian Idea of Beauty.” Intellectual and Literary History Seminar, University of Sussex (March 2003).
“Physiognomy and the Idea of a Pseudo-Science in the Nineteenth-Century.” Science, Engineering, and Technology for Britain: Science Week. The Houses of Parliament, London (March 2003).
“At the Margins of Science: Physiognomy and the Idea of a ‘Normal’ Science.” Society for the Social History of Medicine Conference on “The Normal and the Abnormal.” University of Manchester (July 2002).
“When is a Science not a Science? Physiognomy and the Idea of a Pseudo-Science in the Nineteenth-Century.” History and Philosophy of Science Research Seminar, University of Leeds (October 2001).
“Ruskin and the Problem of Aesthetic Judgement.” Ruskin Seminar Series, The Ruskin Library, University of Lancaster (November 1999).
“Rethinking the Pre-Raphaelites: A Brotherhood of Ordinariness?: English Research Seminar, University of Keele (November 1998).
“The Linguistic Predicament; or Using and Abusing Rhetoric from Descartes to De Man.” Section d’Anglais, Faculté des Lettres, Universite de Lausanne (June 1998).
“Darwin’s Universal Expressions.” Center for Eighteenth-Century Studies Research Seminar, University of York (May 1998).
“‘Suppose you Look’: Speculations on the Nature of the Sublime in Burke and Turner.” Institut fur England-und Amerikastudien, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universitat, Frankfurt (May 1997).
“Lavater, Bell and the Science of Expression.” History and Philosophy of Science Seminar, University of Cambridge (November 1996).
“‘A Pantomimic Art without the Aid of Text’: The Language of Physiognomy in the Early Paintings of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.” Nineteenth-Century Research Seminar, Victoria and Albert Museum (October 1995).
“Visualizing Expression: Charles Bell’s Essays on Anatomy and the Language of the Face in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries.’ Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, University of Oxford (January 1995).