I'm a professor of history at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario.

I write a lot about pop culture and history. I co-edited The Hobbit and History and Star Wars and History along with contributing chapters on Carlisle Cullen to Twilight and History (2010) and chapters on women/witches and the government of the wizarding world to Harry Potter and History (2011). I've also published on the relationship of history to Battlestar Galactica and science fiction as a genre. I've also published on parenting and fan reactions to female characters' storylines in Game of Thrones drawing on medieval and early modern historical elements.

I also write conventional histories of people in early modern England. This includes a study of the downfall of Margaret Pole, in Women During the English Reformations and an article on how 17th & 18th century London parishes treated impoverished mothers as burdens to shift onto other rate-payers' shoulders.