I am interested in analysing and questioning data in historical and humanistic inquiry. My research combines archival exploration, computational methods, and visualisation to study spatial histories of free movement, weather and climatic variation, as well as legal history.
My first book developed a history of free movement in the early modern German lands. Borders and Freedom of Movement in the Holy Roman Empire (Oxford University Press, 2020) charts the contentious ordering of movement in this dense landscape through the lens of safe conduct, an institution that was common throughout the early modern world but became a key framework for negotiating freedom of movement and its restriction in the Old Reich.
I am currently working on a study of severe weather that combines digital and archival evidence in an effort to develop the representation of weather and climate in spatial history.
I have designed and taught numerous lecture and seminar classes for undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students on a range of topics in the digital humanities and history, including a university-wide course on critical data visualisation. I also acted as co-director of Stanford’s Digital Humanities Graduate Fellowship Program and developed new programmes in digital humanities and culture at Manchester.
Before joining the University of Manchester as Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Digital Humanities, I held a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at Stanford University from 2016 to 2019. I earned a PhD in History at the European University Institute in Florence, an MA in History at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris and the University of Heidelberg, as well as a BA in Economics at the latter university. I have also taught at the Free University of Berlin and have been a visiting scholar at the University of Saint Andrews and at Columbia University.