At Oxford, Max wrote his doctorate on twelfth-century Byzantium and the Crusades, for which he carried out extensive fieldwork in the Balkans and the Middle East. He then became a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, where he continued his research with expeditions to Israel-Palestine, Iran, Turkey, Georgia, Serbia, and Kosovo. He has since become a lecturer in Tokyo, while also being a research associate at St. Benet’s Hall, University of Oxford. He is a keen rower and rowing coach, and in addition to teaching on various summer programs has lectured to the Defence Academy of the UK, and worked in outreach programs to homeless people. He speaks several languages, half of which are no longer actually spoken.
