I am a historian of the Late Antique/Early Medieval Near East and Red Sea regions.  I am particularly interested in the study of early Byzantine historical writing, and how people who did not live under the Roman empire (particularly post-Roman Copts, Syrians, and medieval/early modern Ethiopians)  remembered it and used it to forge their own religious and political identities. I conduct my research through the study of the transmission and reuse of historical and hagiographic texts from Greek into Classical Ethiopic (Gə’əz), Coptic, and Syriac.

My first monograph, The Chronicle of John of Nikiu: Coping with Crisis in Post-Roman Egypt studies the Chronicle of John of Nikiu as a rearticulation of imperial ideology for and by post-Roman subjects in Egypt that allowed them to explain and cope with the failure of the Roman state to maintain control of Egypt.

My second monograph currently in progress is an exploration of ancient Greco-Roman ideas of Ethiopia and their use and reuse by the people of Afro-Eurasia and, ultimately, the medieval polity of Ethiopia. It is tentatively titled From Homer to the Highlands: A Global History of the Idea of Ethiopia.

Research Interests

Identity and Memory in Late Antiquity; Early Byzantine Historiography, Medieval and Early Modern Ethiopian History.