Professor of English
Xiamen University
I am a historian and literary scholar who specializes in the study of sixteenth-century England.
I have held postdoctoral fellowships at the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History in Frankfurt and the School of Foreign Studies, Nanjing University.
I am author of The Tudor Sheriff: A Study in Early Modern Administration (Oxford University Press, 2022), The Little History of England (The History Press, 2024) and The Early Parliaments of Henry VIII, 1510–1523 (Boydell & Brewer, 2025). I have also published over 20 articles in leading journals such as Studies in Philology, The Historical Journal and Historical Research.
I am winner of the Parliamentary History Essay Prize (2019), the Sir John Neale Essay Prize (2018) and the Gordon Forster Essay Prize (2018). I was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2022.
BA in History and English (First Class), University of Oxford, 2014
MSt in English 1500–1700 (Distinction), University of Oxford, 2015
PhD in English, University of York, 2019
Shakespeare and Renaissance literature
Early modern history (especially political, legal and administrative)