Biography
I grew up in a working-class family in southwestern Michigan, and was a first-generation and mature college student. Before completing my own college studies, I forged a career in technology consulting and database development, and these skills have helped me in my own academic work as a student, scholar, and teacher. In 2008 my family and I moved to the UK, where I completed graduate studies and began my full-time academic career. We returned to the USA in 2018 to take up a faculty position at Calvin, where I work in the areas of History, Archaeology, and Digital Humanities.
Education
- B.Sc., Behavioral Sciences (Anthropological Archaeology), Andrews University
- M.A., Archaeology (Roman), University of Durham, UK
- Ph.D., Archaeology (Roman Frontiers and the Archaeology of Place), University of Durham, UK
Academic Interests
I am a specialist in life and interaction at the edges of the Roman Empire, comparative borderland dynamics in world history, archaeological theory (e.g. archaeology of place, process philosophy, postcolonial perspectives), and digital tools/methodologies within archaeology, history, and the wider humanities.
I have active archaeological research and fieldwork projects in Jordan and Britain. I completed my MA and PhD research on the long-term history and archaeology of Roman remains in central Scotland, and recently supervised a UK-based doctoral dissertation on the analysis of remote sensing datasets (including LiDAR) for the Antonine Wall. I am the co-director of two archaeological fieldwork projects in Jordan: the Hisban North Church Project and the Umm el-Jimal Project. The current focus of fieldwork at these sites is the relationship between local populations and religious practices and institutions across two key transition periods: from the Late Roman to Byzantine and from Byzantine to Early Islamic.
