Rachel is a Wolfson Scholar and PhD candidate at the History Department of the University of Oxford under the supervision of Ian McBride and Marc Mulholland. She completed her undergraduate and post graduate studies at Kings College London's departments of History and War Studies, where she obtained first class honours and distinction class respectively. Her research concerns the nature of the violence perpetrated by the Provisional Irish Republican Army during the in the Northern Ireland 'troubles' during the 1970's.
Rachel is interested in the study of violence more generally and is a member of other interdisciplinary networks to this end also, including the Leverhulme Research Network, Understanding Insurgencies. In 2016 she founded the Oxford Seminar for the Study of Violence, now Violence Studies Oxford, which included organising and chairing a program of fortnightly interdisciplinary seminars on the topic of violence. In her spare time Rachel is a history and travel blogger at www.blueeyedreflections.com