• Ph.D., Penn State University
• M.A., Ball State University
• B.A., Ball State University

I am a historian of early modern Europe and the Atlantic World. My research focuses on the global Catholic mission. I deal with questions of how and to what extent social and cultural changes within Catholic regions of Europe influenced missionary methods and strategies outside of Europe, and vice versa. I am currently preparing a book manuscript on missionary institutions in the early modern Papal States known as “houses of catechumens,” or case dei catecumeni in Italian. Through these institutions, we can better understand how the Papal States—the geographical and administrative center of the Catholic world—were in many ways one part of a global Catholic missionary field. Using this framework, my work simultaneously centers and de-centers Italy and Europe.

My work has appeared in several academic journals including The Catholic Historical Review and Clio: A Journal of History, Literature, and the Philosophy of History, and is forthcoming in The Sixteenth Century Journal. My work has been supported by the Fulbright U.S.-Italy Program, the Mellon Foundation, the American Historical Association, the Sixteenth Century Society, and Yale University’s Foreign Language and Area Studies program.

While I was in Italy on Fulbright, I was a visiting doctoral researcher at the University of Roma Tre and was affiliated with the Central Jesuit Archives in Rome (Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu/ARSI), and the State Archives of Ancona (Archivio di Stato di Ancona/ASAn).

At SEMO, I teach European and World History surveys, upper-division courses on Medieval Europe and Colonial Latin America, and seminars on the early modern Atlantic World. Before coming to SEMO, I taught courses at Penn State, both at the University Park campus and as part of the study abroad program in Todi, Italy.