I am a cultural historian of early modern science, currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of the History of Science, Harvard University. I specialize in the history of aesthetics, the history of antiquarianism, and book history. I study in particular practices for the cultivation of aesthetic taste, techniques of observation, and the nature of artistic and connoisseurial expertise. In my dissertation, "'The Finest Things on Earth': The Elgin Marbles and the Sciences of Taste," I focused on the aesthetic discovery in the eighteenth century of the Parthenon sculptures and their subsequent reception in Britain to explore these themes and to offer a new perspective to the historical study of aesthetic taste judgments.

In addition, I am interested in understanding early modern European history in its larger context, particularly in relation to the history of the Middle East. I am developing such interest with two projects: Ottoman attitudes towards antiquities, and early modern European ethnographic knowledge of Ottoman Turks. 

I received my PhD in the History of Science from Harvard University. Before coming to Harvard, I studied at the University of Michigan, where I received a BS in Cell and Molecular Biology, and at Henry Ford Community College.