 Before going to Leicester, he was Professor of Modern Cultural and Social History and Head of the School of the Arts at the University of Liverpool and a Professor and Head of the School of Historical Studies in the Faculty of Arts at Monash University in Australia.He holds degrees from Flinders University (BA (Hons), 1980 and MA, 1983), Johns Hopkins University (MA, 1985) and Melbourne University (PhD, 1993) and was appointed a full Professor in 2007.He was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia in 2008 and became a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2010.