About Me

Who I am and What I do

I am an Assistant Professor in the History Department at Brock University, in St. Catharines Ontario. I completed my PhD at the University of Toronto in 2016, where I wrote my dissertation on Homicide in Early Modern Bologna, Italy.

I am a social historian of Early Modern Europe with a particular interest in violence and the ways it shaped daily life in the cities and rural communities of North Italy in the 17th century. I’ve published on petitioning as a means for marginal members of society to access justice, on the function of criminal courts under papal rule, and on the potential for digital tools to reshape our understanding of early modern life.
I am also the co-Principal Investigator on DECIMA, an online digital map of sixteenth century Florence and the people who inhabited it. My work with Historical Geographic Information Systems allows me to ask new questions and pose new theories about the socioeconomic life of Early Modern Italy.