I am an incoming Assistant Professor of Aesthetics at Utrecht University in the Netherlands (tenured), and a Junior Fellow at Harvard Society of Fellows.

I completed my PhD in Intellectual History at Queen Mary University of London. Before that I did a BA and MSt in English at Oxford, an MA in Political Theory at Columbia, and an MA in Philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure, where I was a Sélection internationale fellow.

My first book, The Character Sketch as Philosophy: Manners, Mores, Types, is forthcoming with Harvard University Press in fall 2025. It examines a genre that finds itself at the crossroads between literature, moral philosophy and the social sciences: the character sketch.

I’m currently working on a second book on a range of current political approaches to aesthetics: liberal, Marxist, and late fascist. It is tentatively entitled Three Political Aesthetics: Art and Transformation in the 21st Century. I’m also thinking about approaches to character in contemporary fiction and the philosophy of history.

My academic work has been published in Political Theory, Renaissance Studies, Cambridge Classical Journal, Intersezioni: Review of the History of Ideas, Philosophy and Social Criticism, Classical Quarterly and Iride: Journal of Philosophy and Public Debate. I have co-edited a volume in French, En deçà du bien et du mal. Morales de la littérature de la Renaissance à l’âge contemporain (Paris: Hermann, 2024), and a special issue of Sillages critiques on genre trouble in early modern English literature.

My criticism––on online forums and desire, Jewish diaspora aesthetics, socialist festivals, the French far-right, Shakespeare in China, voicenotes, and European theatre––has appeared in The Guardian and Le Monde, alongside other places.

Sometimes, I work creatively as a dramaturg, for both theatre and television. I have worked with venues and companies including the National Center for Performing Arts in Beijing, Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre, the Grange Festival of Opera, PBS/American Experience, and the Royal Shakespeare Company, on projects ranging from multilingual Shakespeare to history documentaries.