I have three main research areas -- though in practice they overlap and influence one another as well as leading in new directions.

(i) Enlightenment and Romantic literature and culture. 

My first monograph examined Walter Scott's engagement with the medico-philosophical discourses of the Scottish Enlightenment: Literary Memory: Scott's Waverley Novels and the Psychology of Narrative (Bucknell University Press, 2003). I continue to publish on Scott, particularly his treatment of Scottish history, and his impact on nineteenth-century literature, music and painting. 

I co-edited (with David Duff) a collection of essays, Scotland, Ireland, and the Romantic Aesthetic (Bucknell University Press, 2007), which contributed to the evolution of an 'archipelagic' approach to British and Irish Romanticism.

(ii) Literature and the other arts. 

My second monograph, Literature and Music in the Atlantic World, 1767-1867 (Edinburgh University Press, 2014), offered the first interdisciplinary account of the interweaving of literary and musical genres in this period of transatlantic history. The book was awarded the British Association for American Studies annual book prize for the best book in American Studies.

I am developing a follow-on project that will concentrate on Romantic pianism and the Russian Revolution of 1917.

(iii) Medical humanities.

I am currently researching and writing a biography of Robert Areskine of Alva (1677-1718), who studied medicine in Edinburgh, Paris and Utrecht, and later became chief physician and councillor to Peter the Great of Russia. 

* Enlightenment and Romantic literature and culture

* Literature and the other arts

* Medical humanities

Enlightenment, Romanticism, literature, history, medicine, music, visual arts

1991 MA (Hons) in English, University of Cambrdge

1997 PhD in English, University of Cambridge

2017 Senior Fellow, Higher Education Academy