About

I am a historian of abolition and slavery in the American North. I am employed by the University of Iowa, where I teach African American History.

I received my B.A. in History from the State University of New York, College at Geneseo, and completed my M.A. and Ph.D. in History at Georgetown University. In 2022, I won the Best Dissertation Prize from the Society for the History of the Early American Republic. My research has been supported by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Library Company of Philadelphia, and McNeil Center for Early American Studies, among other institutions.

My book manuscript, “For Life or Otherwise: Pennsylvania Slavery in the Age of Gradual Abolition,” under advance contract with the University of Pennsylvania Press, contends that the first US state to enact an abolition program implemented a slavery regime as well as an emancipation scheme. It examines how enslavers refashioned bondage in the early republic, describes the material consequences of their actions, and centers how Black communities responded to these ongoing and novel forms of oppression. An ongoing and related digital history project, “A Just and True Return,” will transcribe, preserve, and contextualize Pennsylvania’s surviving county slave registries.

From 2021 to 2023, I worked as a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, responsible for managing Katrina Jagodinsky’s digital legal history project, “Petitioning for Freedom: Habeas Corpus in the American West, 1812-1924.”