I studied history as an undergraduate at the University of Chicago. One year after graduating, I took up studying Arabic in Lebanon and Egypt before returning to Chicago for a master’s in Middle Eastern Studies. I stayed on for a doctorate in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. In the course of these studies, I spent one year studying at Bilkent University in Ankara and another year conducting research in Istanbul. Immediately before coming to Birmingham, I spent two years as a research fellow at Exeter College, Oxford. In 2016, my doctoral dissertation was awarded the Malcolm H. Kerr Dissertation Award in the Humanities from the Middle East Studies Association of North America. 

I am currently working on a book project that focuses on an examination of the life and work of Idris Bidlisi, visionary historian of the Ottoman dynasty, influential adviser to sultans, and principal architect of the Ottoman incorporation of Kurdistan in the 1510s. Through examination of Bidlisi, the book examines the impact of itinerant scholars and secretaries upon the development and adaptation of new ideas on kingship among Muslim courts across large parts of Asia in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.