My work focusses on teaching, lifelong learning and widening participation.

I was appointed Director of Part-time Programmes in 2025, and Lecturer in English in 2021. I have been Deputy Director of the Bristol Poetry Institute since 2018.

Teaching

My primary concern as a lecturer is teaching. I have taught and convened a wide range of units across the BA ELCE and BA English programmes. I currently convene the Special Author Study, Contemporaray Literature, Social Change and Movements, and Interrelation of Culture between Britain, Africa and the Carribean, and teach on Critical Issues and Transformations. I also supervise 20- and 40- credit final-year dissertations. Recent dissertation projects include Bob Dylan and humour, myths of the American frontier, and a consideration of ecological ethics in contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander poetry.

I was nominated for a Bristol Teaching Award in the Inspiring and Innovative Teaching Award category in 2021 (Individual) and 2022 (Team). In 2022, I was also nominated in the Outstanding Support Award (Team) category.

Lifelong Learning and Widening Participation

I am Programme Director for the BA in English Literature and Community Engagement, the University's part-time, direct entry, undergraduate degree. The degree is aimed at students of any age, background or prior educational experience. No qualifications are required for entry.

I also teach on our short course programmes, most recently on Detective and Crime Fiction: Cold Cases. These part-time adult-learning courses are open to the public; no qualifications are required.

Research

My research considers American literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, especially, but not exclusively, poetry. I am interested in the ways by which America is invented and reinvented in the writing of this period, as well as the connection between American literature and the physical spaces of the Union.

I have a long-standing interest in the work of Bob Dylan. In 2011, I was the co-principal organiser (with Prof Daniel Karlin, FBA) of a major conference to mark the artist’s seventieth birthday. The event was covered by The Guardian, The Times and The Telegraph, as well as BBC Radio 3 and BBC Radio 4; reviews were published in The Guardian and The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics and Culture. Following the conference, I edited a collection of essays, ‘Things Have Changed’: Essays for Bob Dylan at Seventy, which was published as a special issue of the journal Popular Music History in 2013. In 2017, I published a further piece on Dylan, for ANQ, entitled, ‘Bob Dylan’s American Adam’.

My current research project marries these abiding interests. The study considers Bob Dylan’s relationship to ‘the country [he] comes from’ to reflect on the ways in which his depiction of America both responds to traditional modes and follows Ezra Pound's injunction to ‘make it new’. The research takes in Dylan’s choice of medium and his sophisticated use of allusion, repetition and rhyme.

Bristol Poetry Institute

As Deputy Director of the Bristol Poetry Institute, along with the Co-Directors, I am involved with engaging different publics with poetry. It is the Bristol Poetry Institute’s mission to advance the reading, practice and study of poetry within Bristol’s diverse communities and the South West region. For the Institute, I organise or co-organise a wide-ranging programme of public poetry readings, workshops, talks, lectures, symposia and conferences. Previous poets and critics include: Simon Armitage, Neil Corcoran, Natalie Diaz, Mark Ford, Nick Groom, The Last Poets, Liz Lochhead, Alice Oswald, Don Paterson, Claudia Rankine and Roger Robinson and Natalie Diaz. 

Along with my colleague, Dr William Wootten, I discuss the importance of poetry and the role of the Bristol Poetry Institute in this interview for National Poetry Day by the Arts Matter blog.

Membership of Professional Bodies

I am a member of the British Association for American Studies and the Universities Association for Lifelong Learning.