After writing a dissertation on suburbanization, the suburban form, and the maintenance of normalcy in American literature and film, I moved to Christchurch, New Zealand, where I sometimes worked as a tutor and lecturer in the department of English, cinema studies, and digital humanities at University of Canterbury. Then I moved to Brisbane, where I briefly worked at The University of Queensland. I decided that five years on the adjunct treadmill was enough, and I left academia. Sort of. I now work as professional staff at Queensland University of Technology, where I teach writing to science and engineering PhD students for whom English is a second (or third or fourth) language.

With this square office job, I get to play Wallace Stevens.

My research asks quite literal-minded questions: Where is American cinema? Where is the America that appears in hit films worldwide? Where are prestige pictures set? Where are the blank spaces on the map when it comes to American cinema? Has the centre of American cinema’s gravity moved around the map? Why do films shoot in North Carolina/British Columbia/Toronto but not set their narrative there? And so on.