I am an Assistant Professor in the History Department and Interim Director of the Lab for the Education and Advancement in Digital Research (LEADR) at Michigan State University, where she is also a member of the DH@MSU Core Faculty. Broadly, I study people and their relationship with governments, how individuals are conceptualized by administrations during warfare, and their relationship with the space around them. How we define people in conflict is a reflection of politics and political determinism in the period. While much of the theory in defining people during warfare is the purview of political science, the innovative nature of my research is that it uses political theory alongside the methodology of borderlands as pioneered in American Indian and early American studies and applying this to the late seventeenth century in Scotland.
As a historian of the 17th century British Isles, primarily Scotland, I specialize in the intersectionality of borderlands and “frontiers” in the late seventeenth century between Scotland, Ireland, England, and their neighbors. My current book project “Uncertain Environments” is focused on the North Channel and the communities who live on the margins whose experiences are crucial in determining the political reality of the late seventeenth century. Communities and individuals were integral pieces in a larger strategic plan in coastal policy at the national level. I hold a PhD in Transnational and Comparative History from Central Michigan University and am one of the creators of the digital exhibit: Abundant Waters: Our Most Precious Resource launched in 2022 by the Clarke Historical Library.
In addition to working on my book, I have written and published articles on regime change, spy networks, and war widows in late-seventeenth century Scotland. Currently, I have an article on Greenock under review at Britain and the World. Outside of this, I am working on a larger digital humanities project for my research which involves mapping the late seventeenth century experience in Scotland from 1688-1697. Using spatial, environmental, and political analyses the project will be able to track people and policy across time and space during the period.