About

I am a historian of early medieval Europe and the Mediterranean. My research centers on the relationship between ethnic and other identities and the ways these strategies of identification contributed to the development of new kingdoms and states. My 2017 monograph, Shifting Ethnic Identities in Spain and Gaul, 500-700: From Romans to Goths and Franks (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017), explored textual clues from sixth- and seventh-century Gaul and Spain of the shift that led Romans to adopt the Frankish and Gothic identities of their new rulers. My current book project, The Afterlife of Gothic Identity: Religion, Ethnicity, and Legitimacy in Early Medieval Iberia, extends this exploration into the eighth through tenth centuries, examining how Gothic identity changed, and was put to specific uses, in Iberia immediately following Arab conquest. I have also co-edited and contributed to a volume on inclusion and exclusion in the late antique and early medieval Mediterranean, and contributed to volumes on medieval origin legends and the Roman legacy in Visigothic Iberia. I am the premodern historian at UTRGV, where I teach World History to 1500 and specialized undergraduate and graduate classes on Ancient Greece and Rome, Late Antiquity, Medieval Europe, and the History of Spain.

You can find pre-publication copies of my non-Open Access publications in my institution’s repository here: https://tinyURL/ScholarWorksEMB. On this page, you can find Open Access research documents and teaching documents.