Before coming to UBC in 2002, he held a SSHRCC Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the University of Toronto, and taught at Northern Michigan University. His first book, Romanticism and the Gold Standard: Money, Literature, and Economic Debate in Britain 1790-1830 was published by Palgrave in 2013. He has also published articles on a variety of other topics including speculative realism, theory and education, the television program Justified, and Romantic period drama. Although he continues to work in the field of literature and economics, he has recently expanded his research interests to include environmental humanities, agricultural improvement, and the history of science, especially in Scotland. In 2013-14, he held Research Fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and at the Centre for the History of the Book, both at the University of Edinburgh.