My main research interests lie in Literature of the Civil War and Restoration periods, especially the work of Andrew Marvell and John Milton, Early Modern Literature and Diplomacy, and Early Modern Literature’s relationships with the Atlantic World.

I am currently working on a monograph project, provisionally titled Literature and Empire in the British Atlantic World, 1630-1740, which will look at the production and reception of work across the Anglophone Atlantic, focussing on texts by George Herbert, John Milton, Anne Bradstreet, Aphra Behn, Daniel Defoe, John Dryden, Cotton Mather, Edward Taylor, and James Thomson.

I have an ongoing interest in Literature of the Civil War and Restoration periods, especially the work of Andrew Marvell, John Milton and John Dryden, and the political contexts of their writing. In 2008 I published the monograph Poetry and the Cromwellian Protectorate: Culture, Politics, and Institutions, and co-edited the 2019 Oxford Handbook of Andrew Marvell with Martin Dzelzainis. 

I also have an interest in connections between early modern literature, diplomacy, and international law, and have published several essays and journal articles in this area. I am also interested in early modern and early eighteenth century reading, and evidence of early modern reading practices in print and manuscript archives.  

My postgraduate research teaching includes recent doctoral projects on satire and news culture in the later seventeenth century, early modern literature's representations of labour, and the the circulation of poems in manuscript by royalist readers. I would be pleased to supervise PhD research connected with any of the areas of my research interests. Please get in touch if you are considering working on a connected topic.