About
A brief description of who you are and what you do.
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Write about yourself in the third person. Aim for 100 to 150 words covering the main points about who you are and what you currently do. Clear, simple language is best. You can include specialist or technical terms.
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Research
Research interests
- Late medieval and early modern maritime historyMerchant shipping and overseas tradeMaritime communities and port societiesNaval logistics and administrationDigital humanities and historical databasesArtificial intelligence and historical researchHistorical GIS and spatial analysis
Current research
My research explores the development of Britain's maritime economy, merchant shipping, and overseas trade between the late medieval period and the eighteenth century. It combines traditional archival research with digital humanities methodologies, including relational database design, artificial intelligence, and historical GIS, to reconstruct the people, places, and networks that shaped England's emergence as a global trading nation.
In 2026 I was awarded a €2.8 million European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant to lead Uncharted Maritime Worlds: An Integrated Digital History of Seaborne Trade from European Archives (UMW). Bringing together historians, computer scientists, and digital humanities specialists, the five-year project will use artificial intelligence, handwritten text recognition, natural language processing, and spatial analysis to integrate maritime records from archives across Europe. By connecting information on ships, merchants, cargoes, ports, and voyages within a unified digital research infrastructure, the project will transform our understanding of European and global seaborne trade between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Alongside the ERC project, I continue to lead a £1 million Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) project, English Merchant Shipping, Maritime Communities, and Trade from the Spanish Armada to the Seven Years War, c.1588–c.1765. This research is producing the first systematic national reconstruction of Britain's merchant shipping over nearly two centuries, creating an open-access database of more than one million voyages alongside interactive maps, analytical tools, and educational resources for researchers, heritage organisations, schools, and the wider public (www.maritimebritain.org)
I also collaborate with Dr Sheila Sweetinburgh (University of Kent) on a £180,000 project investigating Kent's maritime history, trade, and overseas connections between c.1450 and c.1650. The findings from this research are being integrated with the wider digital infrastructure developed through my maritime research programme. The project has recently culminated in the publication of the edited volume Kent and Europe, 1450–1640: Merchants, Mariners, Shipping and Defence (Boydell Press, 2025), which brings together new research on the county's maritime economy, shipping, defence, and European connections.
My earlier work was supported by a £250,000 AHRC award, The Evolution of English Shipping Capacity and Shipboard Communities from the Early Fifteenth Century to Drake's Circumnavigation. That project created a freely accessible database of more than 53,000 ship voyages from over 600 English, Welsh, and Channel Islands ports, together with interactive maps of ports and trade routes, laying the foundations for my subsequent large-scale digital maritime research (www.medievalandtudorships.org)
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Research groups
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Research interests
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Current research
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Research projects
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Publications
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Supervision
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Teaching
I teach a wide range of modules which are underpinned by my research interests. Presently, I teach the following:
Age of Discovery? 1350-1650 (Second Year module)
The Hundred Years War (Third Year Special Subject)
I have also taught modules on the reign of Edward II (The Murder of Edward II) and England's maritime past (Towards Empire: England and the Sea, 1450-1650). I also contribute to core module teaching for First Year Students.
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Courses and modules
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External roles and responsibilities
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Biography
I am a historian of late medieval and early modern maritime history whose research explores the development of England's maritime economy, merchant shipping, and overseas trade between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries. My work combines traditional archival research with digital humanities methodologies, including relational database design, artificial intelligence, and geospatial analysis, to reconstruct long-term patterns of maritime commerce and connectivity.
I began my academic career examining English naval logistics during the Hundred Years War, research that culminated in my first monograph, Shipping the Medieval Military. Since then, my research has focused on the size, organisation, and geographical distribution of the English merchant fleet and the communities that sustained maritime trade between c.1350 and c.1765.
I currently lead the European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant project Uncharted Maritime Worlds: An Integrated Digital History of Seaborne Trade from European Archives (UMW). The project is developing new AI-enabled approaches to the transcription, integration, and analysis of maritime records from archives across Europe to create the first large-scale, interconnected history of early modern seaborne trade. Alongside this, I continue to lead collaborative research examining Britain's merchant shipping, maritime communities, and commercial networks, combining historical scholarship with innovative digital methods to make large-scale historical datasets accessible to researchers and the public.
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Prizes
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