He studied English Literature at Grinnell College in Iowa where he was also awarded the Phi Beta Academy prize. After working for a short period as an assistant librarian at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he moved to Brussels in 2001, where he continued his studies in philosophy at the university of Leuven. His thesis dealt with the relationship between food and Kant's criticism of taste. For his doctorate he studied eighteenth-century aesthetics. His translation work includes 'La fable Cinématographique' and Jean-Baptiste Du Bos' 'Réflexions critiques sur la poésie et la peinture' (1719).