Nicholas McDowell grew up in Belfast and was educated at Cambridge and Oxford. He was a Research Fellow of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, before moving to the University of Exeter in 2001. He is the editor, with Nigel Smith, of <i>The Oxford Handbook of Milton</i>, a collection of newly-commissioned research essays by more than 30 leading scholars to mark the quatercentenary of Milton's birth in 2008. His research in the next few years will focus on the 12-volume Oxford <i>Complete Works of John Milton</i>, for which he is editing <i>The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, Observations Upon the Articles of Peace</i>, and <i>Eikonoklastes</i>. These will appear in <i>Volume 6: Vernacular Regicide and Republican Writings</i> in 2011. In 2007 he was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize by the Leverhulme Trust in recognition of the international impact of his research.