I work on Renaissance literature, and have a particular interest in classical influences on English writing. I have edited the poems of Shakespeare for the Oxford Shakespeare and of Ben Jonson for the Cambridge Ben Jonson, and have published widely on English writers from 1500-1700. I am presently working on two large projects: a history of Elizabethan literature for the Oxford English Literary History and a study of the idea and practice of literary imitation.
- University Lecturer, Senior Lecturer (1987-2003) then Reader in Renaissance and Comparative Literature (2003-6), University of Cambridge and Fellow (now Emeritus), Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge (from 1987 to 2006)
- Graduate student, New College, Oxford (from 1985 to 1987)
- Undergraduate, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge (from 1982 to 1985)
- Renaissance literature and its classical forebears
- Early Tudor literature
- Spenser, Jonson, Milton, and Shakespeare
- Comparative literature
- Reviewer for London Review of Books
- Member of AHRC peer review College
- Associate Editor of the New Dictionary of National Biography
- Member of Advisory Board for Scriptorium project (a project for the digitization of a number of manuscript commonplace books)
- Lectures and graduate supervision on topics in English Literature 1500-1700
- £410,000 AHRC Resource Enhancement Award for Scriptorium (Renaissance commonplace books online) (2006).
- £30,000 HEFCE award for developing online Shakespeare resource (2004).
- AHRB funded leave (2001).
- £100,000 HEFCE Award for Aspiration Raising Project (2002).