Research Interests:

• Environmental Archaeology
• Human-Environment Interactions
• Environmental History of the Ancient Mediterranean
• Water History
• Geoarchaeology and Coring Survey
• Palaeolandscape Reconstruction
• The City of Rome
• Urbanization, particularly in Archaic Italy
• City-River Interactions
• Historiography of Early Rome
• Sustainability, Adaptation, and Resilience

I am an environmental archaeologist with particular expertise in historical ecology and palaeolandscape reconstruction. My current work integrates the literary record on early Rome with new geoarchaeological evidence, in order to produce an environmental and topographical reconstruction of Rome’s river valley. I have been involved in several archaeological excavations and surveys, most recently in Rome. As director of the Forum Boarium Project, I have conducted a coring survey of the city’s original river harbour and harbour sanctuary. Among other findings, my research is revealing new insights on the role of environmental stress—in particular frequent flooding and rapid sedimentation in the river valley—on Rome’s urbanization process, as well as the scale of landscape change that occurred alongside urban development.

I also serve as Director of the Centre for Ancient Environmental Studies: https://caes.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/

I'm on a Leverhulme Research Fellowship until 2022 and therefore only teaching in a limited capacity, mostly in AA3020. I've also designed and taught an Honours module on environmental history and archaeology, entitled ‘Floods, famines, plagues and volcanoes: Roman adaptation to the environment.’

I'm originally from Cincinnati, Ohio. I am an alumna of the Interdepartmental Program in Classical Art and Archaeology at the University of Michigan. In 2017, I completed my dissertation, Rome at Its Core: Reconstructing the Environment and Topography of the Forum Boarium, and earned my PhD. In the course of my doctoral studies, I was also awarded MAs in Latin and Classical Archaeology from the University of Michigan. I earned my BA in Classical Archaeology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2009.