Treaties are one of the globe’s most significant, but least appreciated, forms of legal and cross-national negotiation and agreement. My work focusses on how treaties concluded between Native Nations and a succession of colonial, state and national governments provide new ways of understanding North American history as shaped by a pervasive diplomatic culture, leading to hundreds of agreements that remain laws of the land within the United States, and which are driving the resurgence of Native sovereignty across North America. This work forms the core of my contribution to the Treatied Spaces Research Group, which I founded with my colleague Professor Joy Porter. The Group is now established as a globally significant node for collaborative, impactful and cross-disciplinary research and knowledge exchange that actively engages multiple communities of interest.

My approach to treaties is interdisciplinary, employing materials and methods that cut across History, Political Science, Law, and Native American Studies. It is rooted in traditional archival research, the production of digitally-immersive mapping and sound-based platforms, and in collaboration with Indigenous academics, knowledge keepers, curators, and artists. My published work employs treaties as a lens to rethink received interpretations of power dynamics within imperial and state frameworks. Settlers in Indian Country: Sovereignty and Indigenous Power in Early America (Cambridge University Press, 2020) foregrounds Indigenous conceptions of sovereignty and power to refine the place of settler colonialism in American colonial and early republican history. This theme is expanded in a new book, Treaty Ground: Diplomacy and the Politics of Sovereignty, from Roanoke to the Republic (University of Nebraska Press, 2026). Placing a succession of ‘Covenant Chain’ treaties between the Haudenosaunee (sometimes called the ‘Iroquois’) and the British Crown at its centre, the book argues that treaties defined a rules-based system of interaction in the international locales of Northeastern North America. A new project, supported by a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship (2024-27), is ‘Treatied States of America: Interior Diplomacy and the Contest for (Native) American Resources’. This cross-disciplinary study will place archives into dialogue with contemporary Indigenous legal and political thought to frame a new account of the interior diplomacy that formed the US and will influence debates on energy, resources, and the sovereignty of Native Nations. The project seeks to illustrate the powerful connections between colonial pasts and the legal and political contexts that frame the pursuit of a post carbon future.

I am a member of the AHRC’s Peer Review College, and review applications within the Future Leaders Fellowship stream. During my career, I have held several visiting appointments and fellowships and have been privileged to serve in senior leadership roles, including REF Lead, Head of Department, and Head of School.

Agenda for 2026

Research: as part of my Leverhulme MRF project, I will complete research in the U.S. National Archives, the Library of Congress, and the National Archives and Records Administration (College Park, Maryland), and publish podcasts with leading figures in the Native rights community in Alaska. I am currently writing a law review article, ‘A Tangle of Doctrines: Treaties, Originalism, and the Problem of Foundations in Federal Indian Law’ which examines the convergence of treaty diplomacy and constitutional formalism, and will show how law came to displace diplomacy as the dominant language of Native governance, generating the “tangle of doctrines” that continues to animate Indian law today. 

Editorial: Connected Nations: The Royal Proclamation of 1763 and Indigenous Rights, ed. Charles Prior, Mark Walters and John Borrows. An international collection of essays by leading scholars that places the Royal Proclamation in new historic and contemporary contexts, to be published by McGill-Queen’s University Press. We will also complete podcasts on the intersection of Indigenous and Federal law in Canada.

Workstreams: as part of ‘Historic Houses, Global Crossroads’, and in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Newcastle, the National Trust, and Queen’s University Belfast, I am developing a new interactive map that illustrates global connections between two Northern Ireland historic houses, and complete primary research for articles on historic houses as international diplomatic locales.

Funding in Current REF Cycle

‘Treatied States of America: Interior Diplomacy and the Contest for (Native) American Resources’, Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship, 2024-27

(Co-Lead) ‘Historic Houses, Global Crossroads: Revisioning Two Northern Ireland Historic Houses and Estates’, AHRC Standard Research Grant, 2024-27 (£1.49M).

(Co-Investigator), ‘Brightening the Covenant Chain: Revealing Cultures of Diplomacy Between the Crown and the Iroquois Confederacy’, AHRC Standard Research Grant, 2021-26 (£931k)