My principal interest is the literary, cultural and intellectual history of the period 1500-1800, with particular focus on the Civil Wars of the 17th-century, and on major literary figures of that period, pre-eminently John Milton and Andrew Marvell. A subsidary interest is the legacy of 17th-century ideas and conflicts in the modern world, especially 20th-century Ireland.

Much of my work is animated by a fascination with how writers articulate, register, or resist historical change through literary innovation. Poetry has been a particular focus: it can embody most intensely the tension between liberty and constraint that is fundamental to religious and political thought.

On the other hand, I tend to agree with the great Elizabethan scholar Henry Savile: when asked his opinion of poets, he answered that he thought them the best writers, next to those that write prose.

An interview I did with The Guardian some years ago about my route into academia and the origins of my research interests can be accessed here.

Forthcoming talks:

• 'The Genius of Areopagitica', at 'Radicalism, Politics and Poetics in Early Modern Europe', Princeton University, 11-12 May 2023

• '"Of True Virtue Void": The Virtue Politics of John Milton', plenary at the Thirteenth International Milton Symposium, University of Toronto, 10-14 July 2023

• 'The Poetry of Civil War: from Milton to Yeats', at the West Cork History Festival, 11-13 August 2023

• 'The Poetry of Civil War in Britain and Ireland: from Milton to Mahon', Visiting Speaker Seminar, Department of English, Bristol University, 15 November 2023

• '"A Vomit to God himselfe": John Milton and the Revolting Parliament', at 'Parliament and Revolutionary Britain' colloqium, The History of Parliament Trust, 18 Bloomsbury Square, London, 27 April 2024

Biography:

I was born and brought up in Belfast, where I was educated at a city-centre grammar school, The Royal Belfast Academical Institution. The first in my family to go to university, I read English at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, graduating with a first-class BA degree and the title of Scholar in 1994. I then moved to Oriel College, Oxford, to complete M.Phil. (1996) and D.Phil. degrees (2000), during which time I also held the posiiton of Lecturer in English at St. Anne's College, Oxford (1997-8).

In 1998 I was elected to a stipendiary Research Fellowship of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. I left this position in 2001 to take up a lectureship in the Department of English at the University of Exeter, where I have since been Senior Lecturer and Associate Professor. I was promoted to a Personal Chair in 2012.

I have held visiting interdisciplinary research positions at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (2009-10), where I was the Herodotus Fund Member of the School of Historical Studies, and the Centre for Research into the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities, Cambridge (2010-11), where I was a 'Future University' Visiting Fellow and also a Visiting Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge.

Among administrative roles, I was Director of Research in the Department of English at Exeter in 2011-13 and 2015-17, in which capacity I oversaw the 2014 REF submission and advised colleagues on all aspects of publication, grant application, and public engagement. I have also advised other English departments in the UK on the development of their research profile. I currently act as a Senior Academic Lead in the Department of English at Exeter.

Research supervision:

I have recently supervised doctoral students working on Milton, Marvell and Anglo-Dutch relations; on Milton and materialist philosophies; on Milton, utopianism, and millenarianism, on Milton, gender, and the Bible, and on representations of labour in early modern literature. Recent students who have published their doctoral work in books and journal articles include Dr Esther van Raamsdonk; Dr Philippa Earle; Dr Tessa Parslow, and Dr Anthony Bromley.

I'm pleased to discuss potential doctoral projects relating to literature and culture in Britain, c. 1500-1750, especially relating to the following topics:

• early modern poetry
• early modern prose
• literature and the English Civil Wars
• literature and political allegiance
• literature and religious difference / theology / the Bible
• heterodoxy and radical ideas
• translation and literary transmission, especially Anglo-French
• education, humanism and the universities
• literary patronage and literary communities
• representations of Ireland / the Irish
• scholarly editing and textual studies
• connections between early modern and modern poetry
• 17th-century reception of Shakespeare
• Milton
• Andrew Marvell
• Herrick, Lovelace and the 'Cavalier' Poets
• Swift and eighteenth-century satire