I am a historian of the global Spanish empire, the Pacific, and early modern worlds.

My research explores the contested connections that colonialism, capitalism, and faith forged between Maritime Asia, the Americas, and Europe. I work with scattered imperial archives to write history from above and below, recovering how Indigenous peoples and migrants experienced, imagined, challenged, and ultimately made the local and global communities that they inhabited. My research also analyzes the early modern and colonial ideas and practices that, for better or for worse, persist and influence the ways that we see each other and our world today.

My first book, Piracy and the Making of the Spanish Pacific World was published with Penn Press in May 2024. You can learn more about this book and my articles and chapters in edited volumes here.

I am an Australian woman raised in Botany Bay on the stolen land of the Gweagal people. I completed my Bachelor of Economic and Social Sciences with Honors in History at the University of Sydney, and graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a master’s and Ph.D. in History (hook’em!) Presently, I am a research fellow at the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Australian Catholic University in Melbourne, where I live and work on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri people.