“Multo mihi carior ille est qui procul ad nostrum reflectet lumina tempus. In quod eum studium, non vis pretiumque, movebit, non metus aut odium, non spes aut gratia nostri, magnarum sed sola quidem admiratio rerum, solus amor veri.”
I am an analyst with Catholic Relief Services, historian of early modern Europe and the world, and a researcher on contemporary issues of law and foreign policy.
My current history project, Disciplining Empire, investigates how modern norms of corruption, bureaucracy, and the regulatory role of the state were constructed through the novel practice of inspection in Spain’s empire centuries before the ascendance of anti-corruption ideology in Britain. Using the concepts and methods of organization theory and network analysis, my work also maps out the intersection of society, institutionalization, and the structural features of corruption.
I earned a Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Berkeley and an A.B. in history from Princeton University. I have served as a visiting lecturer in the Department of History at Berkeley, where I taught courses on European and global history, including “The Modern Mediterranean,” “Corruption,” “Europe and the World,” and “Europe, Empire, and the Making of Modernity.” Prior to that, I was a Berkeley Connect fellow and a Graduate Student Instructor for several European and Latin American history courses at Berkeley as well as a reading and composition seminar in history entitled “Organizing Empire.”
This little site will collate updates regarding my professional work but outside of my studies and teaching, I am fond of writing ephemera (or perhaps of purveying nonsense), particularly of a digital nature, am a devoted long-distance runner, am a former radio producer, and often volunteer as a tutor and mentor in writing and history.