I read Greek and Latin Languages and Literature, Theology and Religious Studies, Philosophy, and Comparative Literature at Philipps-Universität Marburg and Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen (2002-5), took an MA in Comparative Literature (2007) at King’s, and earned my PhD in Classics and Comparative Literature (2012) here, with a thesis that won the University of Heidelberg’s Prize for Classical Philology and Literary Theory. I was then Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Oxford’s Faculty of Classics and P.S. Allen Research Fellow at Corpus Christi College (2012–14) and held lectureships in Classics (Oxford, 2013–14) and Latin Language and Literature (Exeter, 2014–15) before returning to King’s in 2015. I was elected member of the ‘Young Academy’ at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences/Leopoldina National Academy (2017–22), served as Director of Queer@King’s (2017–21), and am currently on the editorial boards of the International Journal of the Classical Tradition and the Classical Receptions Journal. Together with Dr Justine McConnell, I co-convene presentPasts, an interdisciplinary network of researchers who study cultural interactions across time and the transhistorical traditions that often frame, foster, and shape them.

Literary theory; rhetoric and poetics; poetics of acculturation and dynamics of cultural interaction across time; classical reception studies and the classical tradition; history of sexualities and LGBTIQ studies

Trained in and working across Classics, Comparative Literature, and Theology/Religious Studies, my scholarship focuses on interactions between ancient and modern literature and thought. I am particularly—but by no means exclusively—interested in texts and traditions that come from, are shaped by, or stand in dialogue with classical Greek, Roman, or Jewish-Christian literature and culture. My scholarship generally takes the form of a comparative criticism that adopts a longue durée perspective, places ancient texts into critical dialogue with contemporary debates, directly juxtaposes ancient and modern works, or investigates ancient world literature across different literary traditions.

His current research activities centre on the following fields:

• literary theory, rhetoric, and poetics, ancient and modern;
• dynamics of acculturation and cultural interaction across time;
• global traditions of classical/canonical literatures, classicisms, and constructions of antiquities;
• ancient world literature studies and topics in diachronic comparative literature;
• history of sexualities and literary LGBTIQ studies.