Dr Louks reported the rape threat to the police.
“It’s definitely been overwhelming and an unusual week for someone who is typically a bookish introvert who doesn’t really like attention but I feel quite unfazed by the vitriol,” she said about the events, which were first reported by the Daily Mail, external.
“I was receiving a lot of rape threats, even death threats, but also there were just a lot of people forcing their views about what a woman ought to be or do on me which were entirely beside the point.”
Dr Louks’ PhD is titled “Olfactory Ethics: The politics of smell in modern and contemporary prose” and took her three and a half years to research and write.
She said her thesis “explores why certain writers of the past century use the language associated with smell to characterise harmful attitudes towards objects of disgust and desire”.
“I draw on the well-documented history of olfactory prejudice in order to examine its contemporary relevance,” she added.
