Nick's work focuses on early modern literature, how we receive it, and why it still matters. His first book, Shakespearean Arrivals: The Birth of Character (Cambridge University Press, 2018), developed a new model of Shakespeare’s character formation. His second book, Shakespeare’s Political Sprit: Negative Theology and the Disruption of Power (forthcoming with Cambridge UP, 2024), reorients how we understand “politics” in Shakespeare by reading his drama as a negative mode of political thought. It seeks to give a sustained account of negativity as a powerful creative force that enables new, disruptive political imaginaries. His work has also been published in journals such as Modern Philology and Shakespeare Survey. Nick is currently working on a third monograph, “Resurrection Events in Late Shakespeare”, which has been funded by the Hong Kong University Grants Committee. The project re-examines the vexed question of Shakespeare’s engagement with religion by investigating a striking religious feature of Shakespeare’s late plays: his staging of resurrection scenes. Nick was previously a Research Fellow at the University of Queensland Node of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions (Europe 1100-1800) and earned his DPhil and MSt from the University of Oxford, funded by a Rhodes Scholarship. He holds degrees in Law and Arts from the University of Queensland and is the Deputy Director of HKU’s BA&LLB programme. 

Nick’s research focuses on Shakespeare and early modern literature, but also branches out into intellectual history, literary theory, politics, law and literature, and the intersection of theology and poetics.