Return to contents page.

Academic profile

Current work

Since 2014 I have taught Latin and ancient Greek for University College, Oxford, where I am also the college's tutor in linguistics. In addition I am linguistics tutor for Merton College, Trinity College and Wadham College, and a lecturer in linguistics for Somerville College. I'm a member of the Oxford University Faculties of Classics, Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics, and Modern Languages.

Among other roles I am on the advisory board of the Anglo-Norman Dictionary project and I am the honorary membership secretary of the Philological Society. I am also a regular tutor at the JACT Greek Summer School.

Previous work

From 2008 to 2014 I was an assistant editor and then editor of the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources.

From 2002 to 2007 I was a DPhil student in Oxford and worked on the ‘grammar’ of address (in the broadest sense) and how its linguistic form (in terms of morphosyntax, semantics and pragmatics) and function interact both synchronically and diachronically. In my thesis (Names and Addresses: Aspects of Address in Latin and Romance, Oxford 2007) I argued that detailed analysis of both form and function in forms of address illuminate each other in terms of synchronic and diachronic patterns, providing evidence that forms of address can and should be a focus of attention for linguistic research and should no longer be side-lined or ignored as being unsystematic. Although the thesis has not been published, it can be consulted in print in the Bodleian Library and I would be happy to supply a digital copy to any interested scholar on request.

My previous background is as a classicist: I read Literae Humaniores in Oxford, graduating in 2000. As part of the degree I worked on some papyri from the Oxyrhynchus collection in the Ashmolean Museum. So far, one text I have edited has been published, in vol. 69 of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri series. I am also looking forward to the appearance of my editions of two mathematical papyri from the collection. My thesis for Greats was entitled Greek Geometry on Papyrus (a part is available online here).

Selected publications

(2020) ‘-mannus makyth man(n)? Latin as an indirect source for English lexical history’ in L. Wright (ed.), The Multilingual Origins of Standard English (De Gruyter), 411-441

(2018) ed. with David Howlett and Ronald Latham, Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources (British Academy/OUP)

(2017) ed. with Carolinne White, Latin in Medieval Britain (British Academy/OUP)

(2017) Word of Mouth, BBC Radio 4

(2016) ‘Address Systems’ in A. Ledgeway & M. Maiden (eds.), The Oxford Guide to the Romance Languages (OUP), 897-906

(2015) ‘Dictionaries of Dead Languages’ in P. Durkin (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Lexicography (OUP), 350-66

(2014) ‘Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources’, British Academy Review 24: 46-53

(2010) ‘Ut Latin minus vulgariter magis loquamur: the making of the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources’ in C. Stray (ed.), Classical Dictionaries: past, present and future (Duckworth), 195-222

(2009) ‘Accidence and acronyms: deploying electronic assessment in support of classical language teaching in a university context’, Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 8: 201-16

(2008) ‘Interjections and the parts of speech in the ancient grammarians’, Bulletin of the Henry Sweet Society 50: 7-15.

(2008) ‘E-vocative invocation: on the historical morphosyntax of Latin "Oaths"’ in R. Wright (ed.), Latin vulgaire - Latin tardif VIII (Olms-Weidmann), 13-25

(2007) with J.C. Smith, ‘Some semantic and pragmatic aspects of case-loss in Old French’ in J.C. Salmons & S. Dubenion-Smith (eds.), Historical Linguistics 2005: selected papers from the 17th International Conference on Historical Linguistics (John Benjamins), 191-206

(2007) with James Morwood, Key to Writing Latin (Lulu)

(2007) with James Morwood, Writing Latin (Bloomsbury)