I am an assistant professor of the digital humanities in the English department at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs. My research interests include the digital humanities, medieval literature, and medieval maps. Specifically, my dissertation examines the Vercelli Mappa Mundi (newly recovered through multispectral imaging) and then applies the concepts learned in that study to a wider collection of medieval literature. I look at how medieval texts create maps (both visual and narrative), and what we can learn from that cartographic creation.
My background bridges the digital and (traditional?) humanities. My undergraduate degree from Loyola University Chicago provided me with a strong foundation through my double major in History and Classical Civilizations with minors in medieval studies, Latin, and anthropology. I earned a master’s in medieval studies (University of York) and another one in digital humanities (Loyola Chicago). My PhD combines these two strands of interest. Throughout my PhD, I have worked on the Lazarus Project. I moved to Mississippi to start my PhD there at the University of Mississippi with Dr. Gregory Heyworth in order to learn multispectral imaging. When he was hired by the University of Rochester, I transferred schools to continue this work. This technology allows us to use the technologies of the digital humanities to expand the corpus of material studied through more traditional means. We expand the access to scholars have to previously unknown, unreadable or inaccessible texts through the digital recovery of these objects.