Research Interests
- Britain and its empire in the long eighteenth century
- History of crime and violence
- Comparative legal history
- State formation
- Migration and immigration
Who has recourse to the law? Whom does the law protect? How do state and social institutions mediate access to the law--and how does this shape the landscape of power and privilege?
At its heart, my writing addresses these fundamental issues in the British empire in the long eighteenth century--a time when the answers to these questions were hotly debated throughout the Anglo-American world.
Though my specialty is the social history of the law in the British empire, my broader interests include the history of crime and violence; gender, ethnicity, and immigration in early modern Europe and the Americas; comparative legal history; and the history of institutions, administration, and state formation.
