Professor of German at Bangor University and a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales. She has an international reputation as a scholar of European cultural exchange in the nineteenth century with a primary focus on Germany and Spain. She is also a member of the Corporation Board of Grwp Llandrillo Menai, which provides further education across north west Wales, and sits on the grant awarding panel of the Thomas Howells Education Fund for North Wales, under the auspices of the Worshipful Company of Drapers. She is a member of the Peer Review College at the Arts and Humanities Research Council, where she also served as a member of the Modern Languages Advisory Board.