With interdisciplinary expertise in the long nineteenth-century, my research explores global, transcultural encounters. Primarily a Romanticist, a fascination with the transmission of ideas has broadened the scope of my work: how classical culture is received in the nineteenth century; Romantic legacies in Victorian literature; dialogues between Europe and Asia. Undergraduate study in Dublin meant every lit. course had Irish inflections, while a couple of years in Asia led me to write non-fiction.

At Monash I convene undergraduate offerings on Romanticism, the Victorian period, creative writing, and Modern Ireland, and supervise PhD research on a range of topics. I have served as Honours Coordinator both for the School (LLCL) and for Literary Studies specifically. My teaching has been recognised in an award from the University, while my research has led to my election as a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society. Bodies such as Marie Curie and the Newby Trust have supported my research in competitive grants. My public engagement includes an ongoing Irish fiction group at the Celtic Club. In the later part of 2025 I’ll be based at the University of Oxford as Carr-Thomas-Ovenden Fellow in Romantic Literature.

                            

My first book, Tragic Coleridge (2013), argues that a philosophy of sacrifice permeates Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poetical and critical works, drawn primarily from his reading of the ancient Greeks, Shakespeare, Milton, and contemporary German writers. I followed this with Crippled Immortals (2018), a narrative nonfiction about my adventures in Singapore, Malaysia, and China. My latest book is China from the Ruins of Athens and Rome: Classics, Sinology, and Romanticism, 1793-1938 (Oxford University Press, 2020).

I came to Monash in 2017 having studied at University College Dublin (BA), the University of Bristol (MA), and the University of Warwick (PhD). 

Following my PhD I took up a fellowship at Nanyang Technological University to research Sino-British cultural exchange, followed by a Junior Research Fellowship at Durham University (one of the great sites for Romanticism) to develop work on classical reception in Romantic visions of China. At Monash I am co-director of the interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies Research Unit. Amongst other affiliations I am a member of the Friends of Coleridge, the Irish Studies Association of Australia and New Zealand, and the Romantic Studies Association of Australasia.

Current projects include:

- Self-cultivation in the West (a book and forthcoming 2026 exhibition at the Matheson Library)

- Religion in Irish literature and culture (an edited volume for Cambridge University Press, now in press)

- The reception of Romanticism in Australia (including a co-authored book, in progress)

- A novel

Romanticism
Victorian literature
Anglo-Irish literature
Classical reception
Poetry and Poetics
Tragedy
The Gothic
Postcolonial/Transnational studies
Creative writing (fiction/narrative non-fiction)