I studied at Cambridge and Princeton, receiving a PhD in English Literature in May 2020. For five years, I taught in prisons in New Jersey. I’m now an assistant professor of English at Northeastern University London.
My PhD research was in Renaissance literature, focusing on the English Civil War period (1640-1660), and the relationship between poetry, identity, and political conflict. Recently, I’ve become interested in the 18th- and 19th-century movements to abolish slavery as well as the current movement to abolish prisons. (More details here.)
I also write about contemporary literature and visual art, and have published more experimental essays on topics including dusk, artificial wildflower meadows, and a second-hand computer market (some links here). My work has appeared in The Guardian, Jacobin, LitHub, and The White Review, where I served as a contributing editor.
My first book, What in Me is Dark: The Revolutionary Afterlife of Paradise Lost, is about the extraordinary influence of John Milton’s epic poem on the politics of the modern age. It looks at twelve readers - including Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Woolf, and Malcolm X. You can find the UK edition here and the US edition here.
Photo credit: Nikolai Cedraeus.