Helen's research focuses around problems of meaning and form in twentieth-century literature, literary criticism and philosophy of language, with particular emphasis on the critical prose of William Empson and the philosophical papers of J.L. Austin.

She has recently completed a PhD thesis titled 'Occasions for Criticism: Forms of Meaning in the Prose of William Empson',

While she concentrates, in research and teaching, on nineteenth and twentieth-century literature and critical thought, her interests also extend to the phenomenology of dance and to various forms of response to Wittgenstein.