Personal Statement
I read History, Politics, and German Language and Literature at Heidelberg University, Germany, before completing a D.Phil. on early modern Catholic political thought at Oxford University. I joined the Department of History at Liverpool in 2004, after holding postdoctoral fellowships and temporary lectureships at Oxford, King's College London and the London School of Economics.

I am a historian of late medieval and early modern political culture with an emphasis on Iberian empires and the Catholic world more widely (c.1400 - c.1700). My research connects the histories of knowledge, religion, and violence. More precisely, I study how distinct fields of knowledge (e.g. legal, theological, or historical knowledge) relate to political discourse, experience and practice. Currently, I am working on dynamics and discourses of massacre in the early modern and modern world. I focus on the (self-)perception of perpetrators of mass killings, and the ways in which complex cultural norms shaped the exercise and experience of violence. I also have a growing interest in pre-modern narratives of change and alternative future (e.g. Utopian texts) and how they relate to contemporary perceptions and representations of possible futures.

I am the founding editor (with Pedro Cardim, Universidad Nova de Lisboa) of 'Early Modern Iberian History in Global Contexts: Connexions' (Routledge), a book series that offers comparative and global perspectives on the Iberian presence in Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asia. I am also the founding editor and co-editor (with Emily Michelson, University of St Andrews) of 'Renaissance and Early Modern Worlds of Knowledge', the flagship book series of the Society for Renaissance Studies (www.rensoc.org.uk).

Research Overview
My expertise is in late medieval and early modern Catholic political culture, especially the early modern Iberian empires in Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Africa (c. 1450 - c.1700). I want to understand the ways in which early modern peoples sought to make sense of the relationships, institutions, events, and processes that shaped their lives. I am a cultural and intellectual historian who works comparatively and across disciplines. My two main research strands are the Knowledge of Politics and the Politics of Knowledge in the Spanish Habsburg Monarchy and the Global History of Massacre. I also have a growing interest in early modern and modern futures thinking. I welcome PhD projects in late medieval and early modern Iberian and Global History, the History of Political Thought and Culture, the History of Knowledge, and the History of Violence.