About

I am a historian and teacher based in London. I am currently Head of Politics at Harrow School, where I teach History and Politics. Alongside my work at Harrow, I continue to research and write on British religious, political, and cultural history.

My historical interests are fairly broad, but much of my work is concerned with the people, relationships and institutions through which ideas were formed and lived. My research to date has centred on the Long Nineteenth Century and the history of religion, although my interests increasingly extend into the Eighteenth Century and the wider history of British elite culture.

Education & Research

I studied European Studies and Political Science at Brigham Young University before coming to Britain in 2016 to pursue postgraduate work in History. I completed an MPhil in Modern British History at St Edmund’s College, Cambridge, followed by an MSt in Ecclesiastical History at Oriel College, Oxford. I remained at Oriel for my teacher training and completed my PGCE at Oxford in 2019.

I later returned to Cambridge as a member of Emmanuel College to complete my doctorate. My PhD examined male friendship, intimacy, and religious identity within the nineteenth-century Oxford Movement. I graduated in 2026.

My doctoral research grew out of an interest in the place of friendship within nineteenth-century religious life. The Oxford Movement was not simply a collection of theological positions or a succession of controversies; it was an affinity of friends, colleagues and pupils whose relationships shaped their intellectual and theological development. My work examines how affection, masculinities, pastoral practice, spiritual formation, and ecclesiastical allegiance interacted within these friendships, and how relationships could become theological commitments in their own right.

My current work develops this argument more broadly. I am interested in how friendship sustained religious identities and communities; how theological and political positions developed within groups bound together by shared affinities; and how friendships were later remembered and memorialised as a means of preserving, and sometimes recasting, theological and political positions for the future.

Alongside this work, I am developing research on British elite culture, travel and sociability, which will continue to explore how friendship influenced theological, political, and intellectual formation. In particular, I am interested in the Grand Tour and what travel can tell us about the education and formation of the British elite: what they read, saw and collected; whom they met; and how experiences abroad shaped their tastes, relationships and understanding of their place at home.

Further details of these projects, together with publications and conference papers, can be found under Research.

Teaching & Educational Leadership

Teaching has always been central to my academic vocation. Before coming to Harrow, I taught in both the maintained and independent sectors, and I taught undergraduates at Cambridge while completing my doctorate. Over the course of my teaching career I have taught History and Politics from the early years of secondary school through to A Level and undergraduate study.

As Head of Politics at Harrow, I lead a department of four teachers and am responsible for its curriculum, teaching and learning, assessment, results, and co-curricular programme. Much of my work in the department has been driven by a fairly simple principle: making a course more intellectually demanding ought to make pupils better at it, rather than simply making their lives more difficult.

This has led to a substantial restructuring of our A-Level curriculum. Rather than beginning immediately with the examination specification, pupils now encounter a foundations course in Western political thought, from Plato to Locke, before moving into the examined Political Ideas course. Political philosophy therefore provides a framework through which they can subsequently make sense of political behaviour, institutions, and constitutional structures. We have also placed much greater emphasis on independent reading, sustained writing, and discussion, and changed the comparative component of the course from Global to US Politics.

The results have been encouraging. During this period, the number of pupils studying Politics has grown, while examination outcomes have risen to their strongest level in more than two decades.

Making these changes has also meant leading an experienced department through a considerable period of curricular and pedagogical development. I allocate teaching responsibilities, observe colleagues and organise professional development. Our weekly departmental meetings allow us to devote regular attention to teaching, learning and examination performance alongside the practical business of running the department.

This experience has shaped my approach to leadership. My experience of collegiate institutions has convinced me of the value of collegiate governance: leaving room for disagreement, taking seriously the experience and judgement of colleagues, and building sufficient consensus for change to become the collective work of the department rather than simply the decision of its Head. I have found that this approach not only makes change more durable, but also allows the different strengths and experience within a department to contribute to its common purpose.

I believe that a school subject ought to be treated as something worth knowing in its own right, rather than simply as a vehicle for an examination. Examinations matter, of course, and pupils should be taught how to succeed in them. But good examination teaching should emerge from a pupil knowing more, reading more widely and thinking more carefully about the subject, rather than from reducing the subject to an examination technique.

Intellectual Life Beyond the Classroom

Some of the parts of school life I enjoy most take place outside formal lessons.

At Harrow, I oversee the Palmerston Society programme of visiting political speakers and the Crawley Society, through which pupils give lectures on subjects they have researched themselves. I also established The Gordon Gazette, our pupil-written and peer-reviewed Politics journal, which publishes pupils’ original writing. All three are intended to give boys somewhere to pursue political interests which cannot always be accommodated by an A-Level specification.

I am involved more widely in the academic life of the School through the Heads of Subject and Teaching and Learning committees. This has included work and discussion around assessment, reporting, examinations, artificial intelligence, academic enrichment and classroom practice. I also deliver professional development within Politics and have worked with colleagues to establish an interdisciplinary forum in which members of the Common Room can present and discuss their own research.

I regularly work with pupils preparing competitive university applications, particularly in History, Politics and Law. I also undertake outreach on behalf of Harrow, visiting preparatory schools to support activities including debating and Model United Nations.

Beyond my academic responsibilities, I run the School’s Socials Programme and am responsible for the Friends of Harrow Society. Between these activities and the Politics societies, I manage several budgets and regularly organise speakers, events and other activities involving different parts of the School.

Pastoral Education

I am a tutor in one of Harrow’s boarding Houses. I meet each of my tutees individually every week and spend a regular evening in the House, where I supervise study, teach PSHE and, perhaps most importantly, make myself available to the boys.

Being a tutor also means taking an interest in the parts of their lives which have very little to do with my own subjects. I attend plays, concerts and exhibitions, take boys to activities, help with university and career decisions, and work with parents and colleagues when difficulties arise.

Over the years, I have supported pupils through a wide range of academic and pastoral difficulties and have worked closely with colleagues and parents where appropriate. I have also had responsibility for recognising and escalating safeguarding concerns. These experiences have made the pastoral side of teaching an increasingly important part of how I understand education.

A pupil who is known well is usually easier to teach well. Academic and pastoral education consequently seem to me less like separate functions of a school than different parts of the same responsibility.

Schools & Leadership

My work at Harrow has increasingly made me interested in schools as institutions: how some departments develop strong intellectual cultures; how established practices change; how teachers with very different experiences and approaches can work towards a common purpose; and how the academic, pastoral and co-curricular parts of a school fit together.

Leading Politics through a period of considerable change has also convinced me that there need not be a choice between intellectual seriousness, a broad education, and excellent examination results. Our best results have come as we have asked more of pupils, not less.

That remains an important principle in how I approach both teaching and leadership.

Academic & Professional Enquiries

This website brings together my research, publications and current projects with my teaching and other professional work.

For academic collaborations, conferences, speaking engagements, professional enquiries or private tuition, please use the Contact page.