This collection explores how we make meaning through music, media, story, and self. It examines how culture shapes identity, emotion, and social life — from ancient texts to pop icons, longing to resistance.
Moving between personal reflection and critical inquiry, these essays trace the tensions and transformations that define human experience. They hold space for beauty, contradiction, and the stories we tell to survive, connect, and become.
Culture in Context
Pop Culture, Community & The Politics of Identity
Britpop to Brexit: Popular Music and the Neoliberal Project in the UK
Winner of the Michael Fellman Graduate Prize (Simon Fraser University) for best essay or thesis
Traces the trajectory of Britpop as a voice of working-class resistance in 1990s Britain. Co-opted by New Labour’s image politics and neoliberalism’s advance, its unheeded warnings echo in the contemporary resentments that fuelled Brexit. From Pulp to policy, the piece links cultural expression to political consequence.
Covid-19: living the blues
Published essay, The Ormsby Review.
Reflective and elegiac, this essay traces the quiet grief of pandemic isolation through the communal power of live blues. A tribute to Vancouver’s Railway Club and the restorative spirit of music.
Myth, Tragedy & Power
Interrogating justice, fate, and agency in ancient Greek texts.
Medea: slayer of social oppression and patriarchy
A fierce essay on Euripides’ Medea as both victim and agent of resistance. Racialized, gendered, and betrayed, she reclaims power through vengeance—interrogating systemic complicity and challenging who is truly at fault.
Antigone’s Anguish: The Devastation of Rule Without Mercy
Tyranny, family loyalty, and moral conviction in Sophocles’ Antigone raise enduring questions about leadership and justice. This essay explores state, power and the folly of governance lacking in dialogue or compassion.
Oresteia and the search for justice
Aeschylus’ Oresteia traces a violent cycle of revenge evolving into civil justice. By exploring fate, free will, and the shift from brutal retribution to reasoned judgment, the piece raises timeless questions about morality and social order.
To be themselves: Gender and justice in the ancient Greek canon
Examines how ancient Greek drama challenges gender roles and justice, contrasting patriarchal power with feminine agency. From violent revenge to emerging civil law, gender expectations are subverted in the pursuit of authentic feminine agency.
Desire & Transformation
Explorations of love, longing, suffering, and grace.
Scraps of love and the sweetness of longing
A lyrical reflection on tenderness, memory, and impermanence. Fragmented but full, this piece traces how small moments — letters, glances, gestures — shape the ache and beauty of love.
Toward a Higher Love: On Longing, Beauty and Becoming
The philosophy of Plato and poetry of Sappho frame an exploration of beauty, desire, and love. From sensual longing to spiritual aspiration, love is urgent, transcendent, all-embracing. Through it, we become more fully embodied — and more fully divine.
Of Mercy & Music: Notes Toward Grace
Pairs James Baldwin’s Sonny’s Blues and Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red to explore emotional expression, suffering, and transformation. It traces the fragility of grace — from the improvisational truths of jazz to the fractured poetics of myth.
On pleasure: The Epicurean Life
Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things and Epicurean philosophy rejected superstition in favour of science. It advocates for the pursuit of pleasure through wisdom and tranquility in this earthly life, urging us to live well, worry less, and embrace joy.
Memory & Place
Snapshots reflecting on everyday culture, urban life, and impermanence in London.
A brief sojourn in London’s East End
A stay in Mile End weaves together the quiet rhythms of house sitting with the rich textures of East London life. Cheeky cats, post-war rebuilds, Victoria Park, and the Old Vic inform a broader reflection on curiosity, culture, and finding home in an ever-changing city.
Hustling for home
Part memoir, part how-to, this post traces an unconventional path shaped by curiosity, serendipity, and resourcefulness. House sitting becomes a unique diagnostic lens on trust, socioeconomic precarity, and the search for space in a global city.
So long for now, South London
A fond goodbye to a fleeting home. Moving between distinct jobs, boroughs, and neighbours, this essay reflects on movement and transience, capturing the delicate texture of everyday life in an ever-shifting city.
London: City of lights
A festive winter walk through London’s twinkling cityscape. Carnaby Street, Covent Garden, Soho and more bring levity and luminosity to London’s dark winters. Light becomes a lens on season and spirit, bringing everyday culture alive in the dark.
For deeper explorations of social and civic themes, see Systems, Power & Place.