Profile

I live in Oxford in a house I share with friends. I’m from Birmingham and love football; I grew up with Birmingham City and still watch them occasionally, and have also been a keen supporter of Solihull Moors (Conf North champs 2015/16!) since they formed in 2007.

I have a Scottish grandparent and have lived in Scotland (St Andrews in Fife), and I moved from there to Istanbul in Turkey, where I lived for two years.

I have a brother who is six-and-a-half years younger than me, and approximately 6.5x cooler than me.

When I was a teenager, I played bass and guitar in a band with a very rude name.

When I worked in a secondary school, I picked up the nickname ‘Mr Sheeran’ because some kids think I look like Ed Sheeran. My leaving present from the rest of the department was an Ed Sheeran mug. I keep it with my Margaret Thatcher mug, like some sort of modern-day Viking drinking from the skulls of my sworn enemies.

My work explains the reasons behind the creation of an official diplomatic and trading agreement between Tudor England and the Ottoman Empire, which was done in the years 1579-83. I look at the political changes in the Ottoman Empire after 1565 and use them to explain why they were willing to agree a new deal with England, even though they had turned down similar offers from other countries during the same period.

I also look at the efforts made and methods used by England’s ambassadors (and Ottoman politicians) in Istanbul to maintain and grow this new relationship, from 1583 through to 1606 or so. That means thinking about how the personalities and skills of different ambassadors affected how they did their job, as well as thinking about the how much they became involved in Turkish and European politics through their own actions and the actions of the friends and enemies they made during their stays in Istanbul.

I put my trousers on, have a cup of tea, and I think about leaving the house…

Alternatively, I get out of the house to one of my favourite work areas within the university, and I set myself up for the day.

I prefer to write in the mornings when my mind feels fresher and clearer – though I often end up doing a lot of ‘admin’ in the mornings too. This can be responding to emails about duties I’ve taken on within my college or my department (e.g. teaching, outreach visits to schools, organising events within college), or to do with other things I might be working on (blogging or writing articles, volunteering, etc.) – so there’s a lot of variety there.

I set aside the afternoon for reading new material, whether that’s primary sources (historic documents) or work published by other historians. Sometimes I have to visit libraries and archives in order to see the original documents.

I never work at weekends. That’s Joel time.