• Modern Literatures in English
• The History and Culture of London
• Literary Translation and German Swiss Literature

Winner of Geisteswissenschaften International Nonfiction Translators Prize, 2018-19

2013 Elected Fellow of the English Association

1988-89 Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship

1984 British Academy Publications Grant

1978-82 Graduate Scholar, St Cross College, Oxford

1977 Junior Heath Harrison Scholar in German, Oxford University  

1975-78 John Doncaster Scholar in German, Magdalen College, Oxford

• 1978 B.A. (Double First) in English Language and Literature, Oxford University (MA 1982)
• 1982 D.Phil in English Literature and PGCE in English, Oxford University
• 1979-83 Tutor/Lecturer in English Literature for six Colleges at Oxford University
• 1982-84 Lecturer in English, College of St Paul and St Mary, Cheltenham
• 1984-90 Lecturer in English, Lancaster University
• 1988-89 Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow, Englisches Seminar, University of Cologne
• 1990- Professor of English, University of St Gallen

Selected publications:

• Poetry, Painting and Ideas, 1885-1914 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988) [US publication: Symbol to Vortex: Poetry, Painting and Ideas, 1885-1914 (New York: St Martin’s Press,1985)]
• Instabilities in Contemporary British Poetry (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988)
• Imagining London, 1770-1900 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004)
• Narrating the Past: Historiography, Memory and the Contemporary Novel (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)