I am a Professor, and currently Head of Department, of Philosophy at Durham University. I work on the history of metaphysics: time, space, matter, soul, change, identity, process, and idealism. And on women philosophers, who have traditionally been neglected by historians of philosophy. In 2020, I was awarded a Leverhulme Prize for research excellence.

I’ve written some books. My trade book, The Meaning of Travel: Philosophers Abroad (2020, Oxford University Press), explores philosophical questions around travel. From the “Age of Discovery” to the present day, it asks after travel issues that have hooked philosophers, including the nature of maps, wilderness, and the significance of our little blue planet. The Meaning of Travel has been translated into five languages; reviewed in places such as The Wall Street Journal, The Spectator, and Literary Review; and it’s led to many radio and print interviews. This article introduces the very idea of philosophy of travel.

I’ve authored three scholarly monographs. Real Time: A Reinvention in British Metaphysics 1883-1928 (2026, Oxford University Press), argues that many of the questions we ask about time today were invented during this particular slice of history. Victoria Welby (2023, Cambridge University Press) offers the first study of Welby’s science-fuelled metaphysics. Absolute Time: Rifts in Early Modern British Metaphysics (2018, Oxford University Press) explores the view, popularised by Newton, that time or duration is a kind of thing.
I have edited three volumes. Letters of English Women Philosophers 1902-1951 (2026, Oxford University Press) offers over two hundred never-before-published letters. Time at the Turn of the Twentieth Century in American-British Philosophy comprises a special, 2023 issue of the British Journal for the History of Philosophy. Early Modern Women on Metaphysics (2018, Cambridge University Press) recovers the views of seventeenth-century women philosophers . Elsewhere I authored the first scholarship ever on the philosophy of Hilda Oakeley, and of May Sinclair.

I am committed to getting philosophy out beyond the academy, via popular articles, podcasts, and radio. My writing has appeared in venues such as Aeon, New Statesman, and History Today. You can hear me talking about time on BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time; and about travel on BBC Radio 4’s Start the Week and Moral Maze. I am a commissioning editor for the popular Philosopher’s Magazine.

Previously, I studied for my PhD at Christ’s College, Cambridge. Afterwards I held a postdoc at the University of Groningen. My earlier work has been supported by a Netherlands Research Council “Veni” grant, a British Academy “Rising Star” grant, and an AHRC Leadership Fellowship. I am a Fellow of the UK’s Higher Education Academy. I sit on editorial boards for the British Journal for the History of Philosophy, the journal Analysis, the International Association for the Philosophy of Time, the Cambridge Elements series on historical women philosophers, and the Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Philosophers. At Durham, I have held many administrative and management roles, including Head of Durham’s Philosophy Department. For my popular books I am represented by United Agents.