As a historian, I have focused my research on the multi-cultural political environment in the 18th-century trans-Appalachian West. Specifically, I am interested in uncovering the political voices of 18th-century Native Americans as they negotiated their places within expanding North American empires.
In May of 2025, I successfully defended my dissertation titled, “Confluences of Peace and Power: A Microhistory of Peacemaking in Trans-Appalachia, 1765.” According to the abstract:
In 1765, representatives from the British Empire, led by Deputy Superintendent of Indian Affairs George Croghan, and diplomats representing diverse Indigenous nations that had spent the last two years resisting the expansion of that empire during the so-called Pontiac’s War met to discuss the terms of a lasting and mutually beneficial peace. This dissertation is a microhistory of those negotiations. As such, it is a study of peace, both as a choice and a practice, during a time much more commonly seen as exceedingly violent. The broader historiography of colonialism in North America squarely focuses on the violence of dispossession of Indigenous peoples during this time, which is understandable considering how widespread and deleterious this process was for Indigenous communities. However, such a focus simultaneously creates the sense that violence and dispossession were teleological processes within the structure of colonialism. This dissertation instead uses a focused diplomatic and ethnohistorical lens to argue that peace was possible and supported by Indigenous and British imperial agents alike, and therefore a later return to dispossessive violence by the nascent United States was a choice and not a structural inevitability. Such an approach uncovers diverse voices, including voices erased by the archive while centering the agency and impact of often historically marginalized peoples. In the process, this dissertation intervenes within this historiography of Pontiac’s War itself broadly Indigenous-Anglo American relations, as well as a still developing historiography of eighteenth-century peace studies.
In addition to completing my PhD in History at Lehigh University in May of 2025, I assisted the department with developing and implementing their content strategy. I have taught courses on Native American cultures at Messiah University in Grantham, Pennsylvania.
Additionally, I formerly served as both the producer of the Way of Improvement Leads Home podcast—hosted by the award-winning historian John Fea—as well as the project manager for the Digital Harrisburg Initiative.