David Russell gained his PhD in English from Princeton University in 2011. After holding postdoctoral fellowships at the Mahindra Center for the Humanities at Harvard University, and the Society of Fellows at Columbia University, he was a lecturer at King's College London from 2013-2015, and from 2015-2023 was Associate Professor of English at the University of Oxford, where he was a fellow of Corpus Christi College. Russell is currently Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. His previous book concerns the tact of the essay form. His current interests are in British psychoanalysis, art history, and the writings of John Ruskin. He has written widely on the essay and his work has been supported by the Leverhulme Foundation.