I am an archaeologist with a research focus on Roman and medieval North Africa and the western Mediterranean. Currently, a Geballe Dissertation Prize Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center, I recently gained my doctorate from Stanford University.
I received my BA (Hons) in Archaeology, Classics and Classical Art from the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. My PhD research was conducted under the auspices of the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University, although I spent most of my time in the Archaeology Center. Whilst at Stanford, I also received an MA in Classics from the Department of Classics.
My current research focuses on the transformation of North Africa between AD 500 and 800, a time of remarkable change encompassing the dissolution of the western Roman empire, the Arab conquests and the spread of Islam. My approach integrates the archaeology of urban and rural spaces with a close reading of textual sources to understand imperialism, power and identity in Byzantine and Islamic North Africa.
My other research interests include funerary archaeology, the historiography of archaeology in North Africa and field methodology.
I have conducted archaeological fieldwork all over the Mediterranean, and worked on Roman and medieval sites in Morocco, Libya, Spain, Italy, Turkey, and Israel. For the last few years, I've been supervising the excavation of the medieval cemetery (6th–15th centuries) attached to the church and monastery of San Pietro di Villamagna in Italy. I am currently the field director of a new survey project of the Ghadames Oasis in Libya. My latest project is a survey and excavation project of the Roman and medieval landscapes around Djarawa, Eastern Morocco, which I co-direct with Moroccan and UK-based colleagues.