I was educated at Cambridge University, where I studied History at Queens' College as an undergraduate (1993-1996). My graduate studies proceeded at King's College Cambridge, first on the MPhil. programme in Political Thought and Intellectual History (1997-8), and then as a doctoral student. I completed my PhD in 2001, at which point I took up a  Research Fellowship at Magdalene College, Cambridge and then, in 2002-3, a College Lectureship at Christ's College Cambridge. In 2003 I moved to the History Department at UCL as Lecturer in Intellectual History. In 2010, I was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize in Early Modern History, and in 2012 was promoted to the position of Reader in Intellectual History.