I have a large admin role at the moment and so haven’t been doing much teaching. But this semester I have a large first and second year class which I’m really enjoying: I’d forgotten how invigorating it is to try to persuade students to see why the NT texts are so exciting, and how rewarding it is when you see them getting your point. For the same reason I have much less research time than usual, but when I do get a meeting-free day and manage to sit at home in my PJs reading a new book or article I realise again why I love this subject. I enjoy writing too (especially if I’m not overdue on a deadline!); I’ve always been an avid reader and once I’ve got the ideas down I like to spend another day just fiddling round with the prose. There’s nothing like a well-crafted sentence! What I really like about working at a university is the variety – teaching, research, travel, conferences, public lectures, even meetings sometimes.

I’m interested in the way characters and texts are moulded to support an author’s particular rhetorical interests. Although I like to think of myself as a historian, I’m less interested in finding history behind every verse and much more intrigued by the persuasive power of ancient documents (whether Jewish, Christian or Graeco-Roman).