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Introduction

Growing up near the Great Lakes, I developed a keen interest in the natural world and understanding of how people interact with their environment. I studied anthropology, archaeology, and biology during my undergraduate, and became interested in how chemical analyses of ancient proteins can be used to explore the lives of past peoples, animals, and ecosystems. Using these techniques, my postgraduate work has investigated the socioeconomic roles played by animals in historical North America. My current research programme seeks to further broaden the ability of these analyses to help reframe our understanding of long-term environmental changes and human-animal relationships spanning the Holocene and across the globe.

Research

My research integrates biomolecular techniques with zooarchaeology and historical ecology to explore a wide range of topics. Much of my current work is centered around two main themes:

1. The roles that animals play in human societies. My research explores how animals have both shaped and been shaped by human societies. I am particularly interested in uncovering the role of colonial transoceanic and transcontinental trade networks and the industrialization of husbandry practices in reshaping human-animal relationships over the last 500 years. This work foregrounds animals as sentient beings with unique experiences, rather than simply as sources of meat and raw materials, and seeks to provide alternative perspectives on human-environment entanglements and the formation of domesticated landscapes. Current projects are based in the Americas and Europe.
2. Reconstructing past ecosystem dynamics. I aim to better understand how humans have altered their environments over time and identify which activities have driven ecological tipping points. While this work spans a broad geographic and temporal range, a central focus is on colonial ecologies and industrial transformations of coastal aquatic ecosystems—and how insights from past environmental change can inform contemporary approaches to ecosystem restoration. My ongoing projects, in collaboration with Indigenous communities and conservation programs, are investigating these processes in the Baltic Sea, Gulf of Mexico, Great Lakes and St. Lawrence seaway, and the northern coastal regions of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Select Publications

Select publications are available here.