David has appeared on BBC2 and Smithsonian television as well as at the Hay Literary Festival and in the TLS. Recently, he held a research fellowship at the National University of Ireland, Galway. He works on the histories of coastlines, oceans, and the communities that rely on them, and likes to explore the past by ‘doing’ as much as reading, taking small boats out to sea to research the culture and heritage of shorelines, and encouraging students to use built and natural environments to understand how past people lived.