I was born and raised on the north side of Dublin. I studied philosophy at Trinity College, then at King’s College London, specializing in ancient philosophy and the history of early-modern European philosophy. After teaching English in China and in Siberia, I began working in libraries at the University of Cambridge. I’m librarian, and a Fellow, of St Catharine’s College, one of the constituent Colleges of the University. My PhD examined Plato’s representation of the death of Socrates, though my two major research interests are now library history, and cataloguing and classification.