I’m a historian of modern Europe with particular interests in the cultural politics of Britain and its empire. My research focuses on liberal imperial governance, nationalism, and the transnational history of ideas.

My current project, Instituting Nation and Empire in the Modern British World, explores the dilemmas British subjects faced in their efforts to universalize “British” institutions across their multinational empire during the long nineteenth century. It analyzes three British institutions that contemporaries imagined would unite Britain’s global populace: universities, local parliaments, and the monarchy. I show how struggles to make these institutions representative of Britain’s diverse subjects hardened racial hierarchies and intensified fault lines between “nation” and “empire” across the British world.

Rutgers University

Ph.D. in History, 2024

Fields: Modern Europe, Global/Comparative History

Dissertation: “Instituting Nation and Empire in the Modern British World”

Virginia Tech

M.A. in History, 2014

Certificate in Public History

Virginia Tech

B.A. in History & Classical Studies, 2012

“‘A ceremony of national and representative character’: the Four-Nations Politics of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee,” Journal of British Studies 63, no. 1 (2024): 139-66. (Available open-access)

“Queen Victoria and (Multi)National Identity,” in Arianne Chernock ed., Cambridge Companion to Queen Victoria (commissioned by Cambridge University Press, expected 2026).

University and Louis Bevier Fellowship, Rutgers School of Graduate Studies, 2023-24

Postgraduate Bursary, Scottish Historical Review Trust, 2023

Fellow, Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis seminar on “Repairing the Past,” 2022-24

Larkin Research Fellowship, American Conference for Irish Studies, 2022

Donald E. Stokes Dissertation Research Fellowship, British Politics Group, 2022

Dissertation Fellowship, North American Conference on British Studies, 2021

Global Wales Visiting Student Researcher Fulbright Award, 2020

Mellon Summer Study Grant in the Humanities, Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences, 2019

Gaeltacht Summer Award, Ireland-United States Commission for Educational Exchange, 2019

Graduate Student Research Travel Award, Mid-Atlantic Conference on British Studies, 2019

Neal Ira Rosenthal History Travel Award, Rutgers Department of History, 2018

Special Study Award, Rutgers School of Graduate Studies, 2017

Outstanding Master’s Thesis Award, Virginia Tech Department of History, 2015

Outstanding Master’s Student, Virginia Tech College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences, 2014

“Britishness and the Complexities of National Character in Scottish University Centenary Celebrations,” North American Conference on British Studies, Denver, CO, November 2024

“The Moral and Legal Ambiguity of Imperial British Constitutionalism,” American Society for Legal History, San Francisco, CA, October 2024

"The 'University Question' and British Imperial Politics of Dis/repair, 1879-1912," Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis Seminar on 'Repairing the Past,' February 2024

“Dominion Magna Carta: Canada, Jamaica, and the Invention of White Settler Constitutionalism,” North American Conference on British Studies, Baltimore, MD, November 2023

“Four Nations and Imperial Politics in the 1876 Royal Titles Act,” Britain and the World Conference, Pittsburgh, PA, April 2023

“‘Responsible Government,’ ‘Home Rule,’ and the Language of Local Autonomy in the British World,” North American Conference on British Studies, Chicago, IL, November 2022

“‘A Quixotic expedition’: The Welsh Colony at Patagonia as a Four-Nations Approach to Empire,” Britain and the World Conference, Plymouth, UK, June 2022

“The Semantics of Colonial Governance in Jamaica’s 1860 Constitutional Crisis,” Constitutions and Crises Conference, University of Cambridge, UK, March 2022

“‘The best kind of Empire:’ Imagining National Universities in Britain’s Imperial

World,” North American Conference on British Studies, Atlanta, GA, November 2021

“The Legal, Moral, and Political Discourse of Self-Government in the British Empire, 1840-1950,” American Society for Legal History Summer Research Workshop, Virtual, August 2021

“‘Loyalist, but no Subscriber:’ A Four-Nations Approach to Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee,” Mid-Atlantic Conference on British Studies, William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA, April 2019