I am Head of the Department of English, where I teach courses on language and writing. Students can come and see me between 2-4 on Tuesdays in Arts A150, or send me an email to set up another time. 

I am a historian of political language. I take the long view on today’s buzzwords and debates, showing how the ways people argued about ideas in the past still shape the arguments we’re having today. Focusing on nineteenth century Britain and America, I write mostly about public speaking, education, political slogans, and ideas like 'charisma' and 'vibes'. 

I have led interdisciplinary research teams on project grants of almost one million pounds, and held visiting positions in Chicago, Paris and Shanghai. I broadcast regularly on BBC Radio 4 and on podcasts, and my writing has appeared in the New Statesman, the Atlantic, Bloomberg, the Times Literary Supplement, TES magazine, the Times Higher, and the Conversation, and been cited in The Financial Times and Pitchfork. 

I am currently writing a book for a general audience called Battle Cries, telling the history of modern Britain through political slogans.

Research 

My work tries to do three things. First, to change how we view the history of public speaking. This has resulted in three books: Lecturing the Atlantic (Oxford University Press, 2017) reclaims popular lectures as a key cultural form of the Anglo-American nineteenth century. Transatlantic Rhetoric (Edinburgh University Press, 2020) is a textbook of speeches from the American Revolution to the Suffragettes used in colleges in the US, Europe and UK. The Cosmopolitan Lyceum (UMass, 2013) is a collection of essays analysing public lecture halls as a global cultural space. 

Second, to broaden understanding of the educational concept of 'oracy'. Since 2020, thanks to two major grants from UKRI (AHRC & ESRC), I have run the project Speaking Citizens, leading a research team across multiple institutions and fields to ask difficult questions about speaking and listening education. We have presented findings in Parliament, shaped practice in hundreds of UK state schools, and informed reforms by UK exam boards. You can read our findings here and in the book Oracy: The Politics of Speech Education (Cambridge University Press, 2025), which features a foreword by Alastair Campbell. My own research into the 'grassroots oracy' of the Chartists and Suffragettes can be read here and an animated video summary viewed here

Finally, to understand the history of bizarre political buzzwords. I have written widely about the pre-history of ‘charisma’, and ideas about political leadership before Max Weber introduced the concept in the 1920s. One of my discoveries is that the idea was rooted in Native American philosophy, as presented in this article here. I have shared this with a wider audience in the Atlantic and Bloomberg , and talked about it with David Runciman on his Past Present and Future podcast, and with Melvyn Bragg on Radio 4. I am completing a book on these themes, Before Charisma: Political Influence in the Nineteenth Century. 

Recent Media Work 

BBC Radio 4: Free Thinking on oral tradition and oracy, March 2026; New York 1925, all four episodes, July 2025 here;  Human Intelligence on George Washington, January 2025, here; In Our Time on Charisma (2022) & Edgar Allan Poe (2023) & Little Women (2024)

Podcasts: Past Present and Future with David Runciman on 'Charisma' (July 2025) here;  Oracy Commission conversations podcast (May 2025) here.  

Journalism: in The New Statesman (2025) on 'How To Sell a Tax Rise', in The Atlantic (2022) on the politics of vibes; in Bloomberg (2024) on charisma v charm; in TES on Labour's new oracy policy;  in The Conversation on 'rizz' (2024) here; on oscar speeches (2025); and on the slogan 'No Kings' (2025). 

My Career

I began my graduate work in History at Harvard as recipient of a Kennedy Scholarship, and received my PhD in English from Cambridge. Before joining Sussex I was a departmental lecturer at Oxford, and have since held research fellowships in Boston, Chicago and Edinburgh and  visiting appointments at Shanghai University, Université de Paris-Cité, and Université de Bordeaux-Montaigne. My projects have received grants from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Fulbright Commission, the Modern Humanities Research Association and the US Embassy. I am an elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, serve on the AHRC Peer Review College and the Higher Educiation Committe of the English Association, have served on the board of the British Association for American Studies, and was a founding member of the British Association for Nineteenth Century Americanists. I live in Hove with two small children and love the South Downs and the Brighton live music scene.  

As a state-school lad with no family experience of the alienating world of academia I now spend a lot of time running activities designed to make universities more welcoming to people of all backgrounds.