I am a British historian of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. My principal interest is in human-animal relations, with particular emphasis on the moral status of animals and on theories of the human cachet of distinction. Naturally, anthropology plays an important part in what I do. I also specialise in the history and theory of masculinity and manliness, and in historiography. I received my PhD from the University of York (UK) in 2006, with a thesis entitled 'Beastly Pleasures: Blood Sports in England, c.1776-1876'. My book - a substantial extension and revision of the thesis - was recently published, on the theme of anthropocentrism and the emergence of animal cruelty ethics in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Britain. I am currently working on a scholarly and contextual biography of the late-Victorian scientist and specialist on mental evolution in animals, George John Romanes, as well as compiling a collection of essays exploring the concept of anthropocentrism.

I have taught extensively on British history in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as on historiography, interdisciplinarity, gender, and on Greek philosophy and literature. I've even taught a course on historical anthropology! I have held teaching positions at the University of York and at the European College of Liberal Arts in Berlin.