I grew up in the Midlands, did my BA in Classics and Spanish at Oxford and PhD at Cambridge, and have also spent time living in Argentina, South Korea, Spain, and the US. I taught at Cambridge before joining Exeter in 2017.
Research
My research focuses on early modern Hispanic literature across Europe and the colonial Americas. I have published primarily on poetry and drama, often working across several language traditions and with an interest in the way imaginative literature can think through ideas that challenged contemporary authors and readers, such as the body politic, violent conflict, faith and identity, new scientific problems or religious persecution and migration. My first monograph, The Epic Mirror: Poetry, Conflict Ethics and Political Community in Colonial Peru, studies how Spanish-American writers and veterans at the turn of the seventeenth century used epic poetry to search for ethical solutions to the violent conflicts of their age in a multipolar colonial world. I am currently looking at sacred epic written in Spanish with a particular emphasis on the Sephardic Jewish diaspora, including a two-volume critical edition in Spanish of the seventeenth-century Biblical epic Miguel de Silveira’s El Macabeo. I also enjoy collaborative, interdisciplinary work and with Erica Feild-Marchello am guest-editing a special issue, the first of its kind in bringing together new scholarship on the literature and culture of both the Andalusi (or Spanish Arabic/morisco) and Sephardic (or Jewish/converso) diasporas.
Teaching
At Oxford, my undergraduate teaching covers all areas of sixteenth and seventeenth-century Spanish literature, as well as translation and the first-year introduction to Hispanic literature. I offer MSt teaching on various topics within early modern literature and cultural history. I am happy to hear from potential research students interested in early modern Hispanic literature and culture particularly within my areas of specialism.
