 Much of her work concerns Mary Wollstonecraft, Jane Austen, and their circles.She has worked in universities in Ghana (Cape Coast), Puerto Rico (Mayaguez), North America (New Brunswick), India (New Delhi), England (Norwich).She was appointed professor of English Literature at Glasgow University in 2000, and was then at Aberdeen University from 2004 until she took up in 2008 the post of president of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, from which she retired in 2015.