Dr Brandon Chua gained his PhD in English Literature from The University of Melbourne. He specialises in British Literature written in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, with a particular focus on the ways in which literary texts from this period explore the relationship between liberty and subjection. His recent monograph Ravishment of Reason: Government and the Heroic Idioms of the Late Stuart Stage (Bucknell University Press, 2014) concentrates on dramatic texts by William Davenant, John Dryden, Aphra Behn, Nathaniel Lee, and John Crowne,  and demonstrates how emerging understandings of the human body and its affective drives generate new dramatic visions of sovereignty and subjection in the later seventeenth century. His new research project, funded by the Research Grants Council’s Early Career Scheme, studies early modern understandings of diversity in the context of religious schism and conflict. Before coming to Hong Kong, Brandon taught at The University of Melbourne and the University of Queensland. He has held a research fellowship with the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions, and was the recipient of the Vice Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship at The University of Queensland.

Research Interests: 17th and 18th Century British Literature; Literature and Jacobitism; Critical Theory; History of Sexualities; Religion and Literature; History of the Novel; Shakespeare Adaptation Studies