I am Professor in the department of English Language and Literature at Åbo Akademi University. My thirteen authored or co-edited books and special issues include 'Mediating and Representing the Slum' (Journal of Urban History, 2023), Deep Locational Criticism (Benjamins, 2016), Literatures of Urban Possibility (Palgrave, co-edited, 2021) and The Materiality of Literary Narratives in Urban History (Routledge, co-edited 2020). My current research concentrates on two main areas: the literary urban history of London as mediated through representations of housing and mobilities; and the secondary city in literary urban studies, with a focus on St. Louis, Missouri and the Midwestern USA.

I have been on the editorial board of the Nordic Journal of English Studies since 2021, and in 2023 became one of the three editors of Nordic Irish Studies. I am on the board of the Finnish Society for the Study of English (FINSSE) and the European Society for the Study of English (ESSE).

Visiting research positions internationally have included extended periods at the Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, UK (2013), and the School of Geography, Queen Mary University of London, UK (2014), as part of my postdoc, and as an Honorary Visiting Fellow in the Center for the Humanities connected with the Divided City Initiative at Washington University St. Louis, USA (2022 and 2024). I have also been a visiting researcher at the Centre for Mobility Humanities (MoHu) at the University of Padua, Italy, for spells in 2020 and 2022.

A Londoner originally, I took my BA at the University of Birmingham (1991) and my MPhil at the University of Oxford (1994). In the 1990s and 2000s I worked on the revision of the Oxford English Dictionary, as a London advertising executive and then as a lecturer at the Estonian Institute of Humanities, Tallinn University, Estonia. I came to Åbo Akademi University (ÅAU) in 2005 and defended my PhD thesis here in 2011. From 2012-15 I held an Academy of Finland postdoctoral research position. In 2016 I gained the title of Docent in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Turku and then in 2016 I became a tenure-track Assistant Professor at ÅAU, rising to Associate Professor in 2019, and full Professor in 2023.

Since 2006 I have taught courses in every aspect of English literary studies in the department of English Language and Literature at Åbo Akademi University, at levels ranging from first year to master's. I have supervised over 30 BA and MA theses and eleven PhD theses, five as main supervisor. I also have university teaching experience in Estonia (Tallinn University) and the UK (Brasenose College, Oxford).