Welcome to my web page! I am currently Assistant Professor of Ancient Greek Material Culture in the Department of Classical, Near Eastern, and Religious Studies at UBC, Vancouver. Previously I was lecturer in Classics and Ancient History at the University of New England in Armidale, NSW. I was the 2017-2018 Postdoctoral Scholar at the Institute for European and Mediterranean Archaeology (IEMA) at SUNY-Buffalo, and the Lora Bryning Redford Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow in Archaeology in the Department of Classics at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, WA (2016-2017). In 2018 I organized the 11th Annual IEMA Visiting Scholars Conference on the topic, "Homo Migrans: Modelling Mobility and Migration in Human History." This conference is currently being turned into an edited volume, under contract with SUNY Press.
I completed my doctorate in Classics (Archaeology Track) at Stanford University I completed my B.A. in Archaeology at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, Canada, and my M.A. in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Between degrees I worked for the Canadian government agency, Parks Canada, as an archaeologist with the National Parks and Native Sites program. I also spent a year in Asia teaching English in China (Beijing and Shenzhen) and Vietnam. My research interests include the intersections of long distance trade with the growth of religious institutions and economic development between the Mediterranean and Near East. I have participated on various archaeological projects in Canada, Bermuda, Greece, Italy and Macedonia. From 2013-2017 I worked as a pottery analyst on the Burgaz Harbors Project in Turkey. I also work with The Zita Project in Southern Tunisia and The Stymphalos Project in Stymfalia, Greece as a pottery analyst. I was a Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Scholar for 2012-2016 and an ACLS/Mellon Foundation Dissertation Completion Fellowship for 2015-2016.
Please visit my Research page for more information on current book and fieldwork projects.
I also have an interest in multimedia and digital resources for teaching research purposes. I recently completed a Certificate in Multimedia and Web Development through the University of British Columbia. I am very keen on encouraging students to use digital tools for analysis and communication. A recent course I taught at the University of Puget Sound on the study of power through states and empires in the Mediterranean and Near East in the first millennium BCE, for instance, features a series of digital essays by students on the organization and manifestation of power in the ancient world. You can read more about this course, and see student projects, by clicking here.
Most recently, I along with several of my colleagues have created a new collection of open-source audio, video, and written resources called Peopling the Past. Learn more here.