Office Hours – Summer 2023

Fridays 12 – 2 PM

Office Hours – Fall 2023

Mondays & Wednesdays 3 – 4 PM

I am a historian of the late ancient Mediterranean. I have earned a B.A. in Medieval History and an M.A. in Late Antique and Byzantine Studies from King’s College London. My teaching and research interests broadly embrace topics pertaining to the history of philosophy, spirituality, and society in the Mediterranean and Middle East from the 1st– 5th centuries CE.  

My dissertation research looks specifically at the archive of Oxyrhynchus, a middling-sized Roman town some 130 miles south of modern Cairo. This “city of the sharp-nosed fish”, though not so remarkable in its own time, has become famous to scholars of Mediterranean antiquity thanks to the many thousands of papyrus fragments (a thick sort of paper made from papyrus stalks) excavated there from 1898-1934. However, despite the fame of the Oxyrhynchus papyri, the city hardly receives focus as an object of inquiry in its own right. My research will aid in the building of a social and historical picture of this city.

What’s more, the Oxyrhynchus papyri, though an immense collection, is an incomplete archive. Many scholars working with the papyri have been told by prior excavators and papyrologists that there is no other trace of the ancient city left; this is simply not the case. The site has hosted nearly annual excavation work by a joint Calatan-Egyptian team since 1992 and their findings have added fascinating dimensions to the Oxyrhynchus we know from the papyri. I join a growing number of scholars seeking to consider papyri not as abstract texts but as text-bearing objects in assemblages with other objects.

My research looks at a specific kind of object—the amulet—as entangled in social networks with other objects, people, places, institutions, and divinities. Through analysis and interpretation of these social networks, my work explores one small corner of the Oxyrhynchite social world: the space of lived religion in the late ancient Egyptian metropolis.

Amulets and Lived Religion in Late Antique Oxyrhynchus

Late Antiquity – Roman Studies – New Testament & Early Christianity – World History

Instructor

WRIT 2 – Academic Writing (Fall 2022, Winter 2023, Spring 2023, Summer 2023)

HIST 114A – History of Christianity: Beginning to 800 CE (Summer 2021, Summer 2022, Fall 2023)

Teaching Assistant

HIST 114A – History of Christianity: Beginnings to 800 CE (Spring 2021)

HIST 56 – Introduction to Mexican History (Spring 2022)

HIST 2A – World History: Prehistory–1000 CE (Fall, 2020, Fall 2021)

HIST 2B – World History: 1000–1700 CE (Winter 2022)

HIST 2C – World History: 1700 CE–Present (Winter 2021)

2023 Esmé Frost Fellowship ($2,500) – UCSB History Associates

——— Conference Travel Grant ($800) – UCSB Dept. of History

2019 Dumas Travel Scholarship ($1,000) – UCSB Dept. of Classics

——— Harold and Kathleen Drake Award ($2,200) – UCSB History Associates

——— Research Travel Grant ($1,400) – UCSB Dept. of History

——— Summer Scholarship Package (Tuition, Room, Board, Travel) – Dumbarton Oaks Research Library

2018 Late Ancient Studies Fellowship ($207,800) – University of California Press & UCSB Dept. of History

——— Thomas N. Sizgorich Memorial Award ($5,000) – UCSB History Associates

2017 Byzantine Greek Study Scholarship ($1,000, Room) – Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

Service to the Profession & University

2023–2024 Lead Teaching Assistant, Dept. of History, UCSB

2021 Online Moderator; GLAS I: Tracing Christians in Global Late Antiquity, May 30–June 2

2020–Pres. Submissions Reviewer, UCSB Undergraduate Journal of History, UCSB

2018–2020 Editorial Assistant, Studies in Late Antiquity: A Journal, University of California Press