Summary
I am a historian of the medieval world, focusing on environmental history in central Italy and Catalonia from the eleventh to fourteenth centuries. My current research focuses on the interaction between societies and the environment in the context of the broader crusading movement. I draw on traditional sources in medieval environmental history, such as charters and chronicles, alongside those from the paleoenvironmental sciences. My background is in Classics, and so I make use of medieval literary sources as well, chiefly medieval Latin poetry. My teaching covers both Mediterranean and European medieval history as well as World History, and I am currently developing courses on ethics and environment during times of conflict in the Middle Ages. I was recently elected to serve on the Council of the Medieval Association of the Pacific, a post which I will hold through 2029.
Research interests
My current research focuses on the environmental contours of the Balearic Expedition of 1113-1115, and I am currently in the process of adapting my dissertation into my first book, which will cover that same ground. In addition, I have interest in microhistory, and I am in the final stages of completing a project focusing on community resilience in the face of political and environmental catastrophe in Subiaco, Italy during the High Middle Ages. Finally, I have also written about the ways in which people in Italy contemplated and understood forested landscapes and trees generally during the early Middle Ages.