About Me

I am a historian of religion, culture, and everyday life in early modern Europe. I am an assistant professor at Conrad Grebel University College, University of Waterloo, where I have also served as J. Winfield Fretz visiting research scholar. I direct the Institute of Anabaptist and Mennonite Studies.

My book manuscript, currently in preparation, reassesses Swiss Anabaptist separatism by analyzing processes of minority making in Zurich’s rural territories through the mid-seventeenth century. In a related project, I explore how archival cultures and practices have shaped historiographical characterizations of early modern Anabaptism. My research has received support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Leibniz-Institute for European History, and the Society for Reformation Research.

In the classroom, I work to help students master course content and use subject matter to engage students in the tasks of historical research: the identification and evaluation of evidence, the construction and critique of argumentation, and peer and self-evaluation. The topics of my teaching are diverse, and include courses in the history of premodern Europe and the world, the history of Christianity, colonial Latin American history, and historiographical methods.

I’ve also sought to share the results of my research with a broader public, particularly in the area of Anabaptist-Mennonite studies. I have written regularly for the Anabaptist Historians blog and contributed to the Zurich station of the Reformation 2017 European Roadmap. In 2016, I published Common Witness: A Story of Ministry Partnership between French and North American Mennonites, 1963-2003 with the Institute of Mennonite Studies, which appeared in French translation as Témoignage Commun: Histoire d’un Partenariat Missionnaire entre Mennonites Français et Nord-Americains (Éditions de la Talwogne, 2016).