I’m a historian of early America and the Atlantic World whose research is centered on the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. I am interested in how diverse cultures interacted in colonial situations; the role of plants in driving European expansion; the dissemination of geographic and agricultural knowledge; and colonial failures in the Americas. I write and present for both academic and popular audiences and my work has featured in podcasts and documentaries.
My first book Cultivating Colonies: Tobacco and the Origins of Atlantic Empires will be published in April 2027 by the University of Pennsylvania Press. It considers how tobacco helped the Dutch, English, and French establish empires in the Americas. It looks in particular at how Europeans relied upon Indigenous and Spanish assistance to learn to cultivate tobacco, a crop they grew in nearly all their early colonies. Happily, much of the research for this project was done in London, Amsterdam, Seville, and Paris.
I completed my PhD in history at Columbia University and am now an associate professor at the University of Wyoming, where I teach courses on the Colonial Americas, the American Revolution, Environmental History, History of Science, U.S. history through the end of the Civil War, and much more.
I also am also the Director of the Wyoming Institute for Humanities Research.
