- Early modern drama, historiography, and political thought
- Shakespeare
- Classical tradition
- Political and religious polemic
I took my DPhil at Jesus College, Oxford in 1996. I was the J A Pye Junior Research Fellow at University College, Oxford (1995-1997) and held positions as Lecturer and then Senior Lecturer at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth (1997-2003) before returning to Jesus College as a Tutorial Fellow in 2003. I am a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and serve on the Oxford English Monographs Committee and the editorial boards of The Huntington Library Quarterly, Postgraduate English and Critical Survey.
I currently hold a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship awarded for a three-year book project (2021-2024) exploring the impact of the fierce controversy over the royal succession which dominated the reigns of Henry VIII’s childless children – the evangelical Edward VI, the Catholic Mary I, and the Protestant Elizabeth I. 'Contesting the Royal Succession in Reformation England, Latimer to Shakespeare' is contracted to Oxford University Press.
I was a Co-investigator for the AHRC-funded ‘Stuart Successions Project’ (2011-2016) which explored succession literature in Britain from James I to Queen Anne. This in turn led to the development of the Stuarts Online (2015-2017), also funded by the AHRC, a major resource bringing scholarship on the Stuart era to a wider audience.
Graduate Teaching and Supervision
I welcome students wishing to work on any aspect of early modern literature, especially drama, historiography, and polemical writings. I would be glad to provide supervision on Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson, Massinger, and any other Tudor or early Stuart dramatist, including Anon, and any thesis which proposes to examine religious, historical, or political dimension of early modern poetry, drama, or prose. Within the Eighteenth Century course, I am happy to supervise work on Dryden, any late C17/early C18 dramatist(s), as well as any thesis which proposes to examine religious, historical, or political dimension of Restoration and C18 poetry, drama, or prose. I am especially keen to supervise theses with a strong intellectual history component.
I teach MSt courses on ‘Shakespeare, History, and Politics’ and ‘Imagining Early Modern London’.
Undergraduate Teaching
I teach the period papers from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth century; Shakespeare; the early modern paper for the Joint School of Classics and English; and interdisciplinary classes for the Joint School of History and English.
I am currently Chair of the Joint School of History and English.
