I am interested in analyzing and questioning data in historical and humanistic inquiry. My research combines computational methods and data visualization, particularly mapping, with archival research to study past efforts at regulating human mobility 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 study 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 data visualization. I also acted as co-director of Stanford’s Digital Humanities Graduate Fellowship Program and set up the Digital Humanities program 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.