Nick is based in the Department of Theatre at the University of Bristol and Department of Drama at the University of Exeter. His thesis focusses on practices of masculinity in leisure and popular performance between 1880 and 1914, drawing on the South West of England as a core case study. Drawing on local collections and newspaper archives, the project explores a range of case studies including amateur athletic sports; bodily spectacle and consumer culture; wrestling challenge matches in variety contexts; touring entertainments; and performances that drew on elite and popular discourses of boyhood.  He is developing future projects on the interplay between sport and popular entertainment in Edwardian Britain, and on biographical approaches to turn-of-the-century industrial practices on and off stage. He is also an active playwright having been on attachment at Bristol Old Vic.