I’m a writer and researcher specialising in people having fun in 16th- and 17th-century England. I’m enthusiastic about teaching and sharing research with new audiences and collaborative creativity.  I’m Lecturer in Seventeenth-Century Literature and Culture at the University of Southampton.

I have published widely on play, game, sport, and culture in the period and written books on Shakespearean drama, an introduction for the Oxford World’s Classics The Merry Wives of Windsor, and recently asking the question, What is a Playhouse?, listed as one of History Today’s Books of the Year 2023.  I am currently working on a popular history of a Shakespearean playhouse called the Curtain.