Introduction
I grew up and went to school in north London before studying English at Trinity College, Dublin. I first came to Oxford for my Master’s degree at University College, and I stayed on to write my DPhil on medieval and Tudor drama. Before joining Queen’s in 2024, I taught medieval and early modern literature in the School of English and Drama at Queen Mary University of London, where I was also Head of English.
Teaching
I teach English literature from 1350–1660, and have particular interests in premodern drama, book history, and material culture. I have supervised graduate students working on a broad range of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century topics including fifteenth-century aureate verse, Henrician court poetics, and the performance of skin on the early modern stage. I welcome enquiries from potential doctoral students interested in any of the areas of my research.
Research
All my work is concerned with the material conditions that shape literary production and reception. My first two books—The Drama of Reform (Brepols, 2013) and Reading Drama in Tudor England (2018)—were about the drama written and performed in England before a culture of commercial playgoing was established at the end of the sixteenth century. I continue to work on premodern drama and have co-edited a collection of essays on dramatic manuscripts—Early English Drama in Manuscript (Brepols, 2019).
Alongside my writing about drama, I have published widely on the interactions between manuscript and print, the marketing of early printed books, and various other aspects of the early English book trade. My current research grows from a Leverhulme-funded Major Research Fellowship and explores the reuse and recycling of old books in early modern England. This work has taken me to libraries across the UK and the US, and has resulted in several literary discoveries including a manuscript fragment of a lost chanson de geste, a new fragmentary witness to Béroul’s Tristan, as well as manuscript copies of poems associated with the circle of Sir Thomas Wyatt. My work on book reuse has led to collaborations with colleagues at the University of Bristol, the University of Kent, the University of Edinburgh, and the University of Georgia.
Most recently, my interest in fragments has led me to Guernsey, where I have been involved with the discovery and identification of twenty manuscript fragments; these amount to the first material evidence of medieval manuscript culture on the island. Alongside planned publications related to these interests, I have begun work on two new book projects: first, a celebration of librarians, told through the lives of those whose habits of collection and organisation have shaped the history of ideas; and secondly, a detailed study of second-hand book trade in early modern England, which will be the first of its kind.