Professor of English
Xiamen University
I am a historian and literary scholar who specializes in the study of sixteenth-century England.
I received my BA (First Class) and MSt (Distinction) from the University of Oxford and my PhD from the University of York. 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.