Peter received a B.A. (Hons.) at the University of Oxford in the UK before completing a Ph.D. in English at the University of Southern California. He has spent his entire career working with students. He started by teaching writing at USC and then English Literature at Pomona College in California. Next he worked as an advisor, helping students explore and pursue their career and educational options, at USC and then, since 2005, at Penn. Before joining LSM in December 2012, he was responsible for pre-graduate and professional school advising, and worked with Penn students and alumni interested in degrees ranging from PhDs to MBAs to MDs.
Peter's doctoral dissertation centered on the representation of the poor in Victorian England, and especially on the debates surrounding the workhouse and the New Poor Law of 1834. While he no longer writes literary criticism, he remains an avid reader, venturing now beyond the Victorian period into the 20th and even the 21st century in search of interesting fiction and non-fiction.