About Me

Inspired by dam removals that led to the reintroduction of migrating fish to my local lake in Maine (which to my great surprise would eventually be featured in National Geographic), my research and writing has focused on the environment. My publications and research interests explore how oft-overlooked events in early America help us better understand contemporary environmental challenges such as river restoration, climate change, and energy policy.

I'm an Assistant Professor of History at Norwich University in Vermont, where I teach courses on the history of early America and the Atlantic World. After attending college on Lake Superior and the Ohio River, I received my Ph.D. in early American History from Rutgers University. 

Future research projects explore the introduction of windmill technology to Barbados in the 1650s. English colonists there formalized the system of chattel slavery around the same time, and I am interested in the role energy transitions impacted the creation of the plantation system.

Building off my book Contested Currents, I am beginning a long term project that will survey the Anglo-Wabanaki Wars from 1675 to 1763. These wars that raged between New England, New France, and Native Americans were in many ways America's first frontier, where notions of race and identity were forged. The final product aims to be an accessible resource that employs ethnohistory to chart the violent conquest of the region in the decades before the American Revolution. 

I am also working on a Reacting to the Past Game on the Haitian Revolution. The project hopes to add a global perspective to existing games on the American and French revolutions by putting African political discourse in conversation with the Enlightenment.