University of Notre Dame Australia
Candidate for Executive Council (2026-28)
Candidate statement
It would be an honor to serve on the Executive Council of ACHA. My first exposure to ACHA was as a recent PhD, where I found a very welcoming and encouraging group of scholars. I have attended and presented several times, and in 2022 I served on the John Gilmary Shea Prize committee. I recommend ACHA to young historians and historical theologians, pointing to it as a model society that celebrates inclusion and diversity alongside academic excellence and specific research focuses.
A North Carolina native, my degrees are from UNC (BA; 2009), Oxford (MSt; 2011) and Marquette (PhD; 2018). I am currently Senior Lecturer at the University of Notre Dame Australia on the Sydney campus, and the convenor of the Global Catholic Studies group (GCS). This new network of Australian and international scholars produces interdisciplinary scholarship on global Catholicism. Our partners so far include Durham’s Centre for Catholic Studies and the Capuchins of Australia.
I am a historical theologian who specializes in Catholicism in the age of Enlightenment and Revolution. My first book, The Synod of Pistoia and Vatican II: Jansenism and the Struggle for Catholic Reform (OUP: 2020) re-examines the most spectacular failed reform event of the age of Enlightenment (the Jansenist Synod of Pistoia), and its “ghost” like presence at the Second Vatican Council. My next book, Vatican II: A Very Short Introduction (OUP: 2023, co-authored with Stephen Bullivant) re-introduces the council, its roots, and its reception in a fresh way for students and scholars today.
I have also co-edited two volumes of translations of early modern Catholic texts, co-authoring critical overview essays and introductions to individual sources. For example, in Jansenism: An International Anthology (co-edited with Richard T. Yoder; CUA Press: 2024) I co-directed a team of scholars working in eight different languages. With Ulrich Lehner, I co-edited The Catholic Enlightenment: A Global Anthology (CUA Press: 2021), a collaborative volume which pushed the conversation beyond the Eurocentric status quo. In addition to these book projects, I have published several dozen academic and popular articles and book chapters, including contributions to the Cambridge History of the Papacy (2025) and the Oxford History of British and Irish Catholicism (2023).
I am also serving as co-editor, with Rebecca Messbarger, Mary Dunn, and Jürgen Overhoff, for a volume titled The Catholic Enlightenment in Europe, the Americas and Australia (1700–1840): Balancing Loyalties Between State, Nationality, Citizenship and the Global Church. This volume, based on our successful international conference held in St. Louis in 2024, centers forgotten voices, from mestizos in central America, to anti-slavery Capuchin friars on mission, to Irish convicts and Aboriginal Catholics in Australia.
I am active in service to the academy and to the church. I enjoy international networking with like-minded scholars of all ages and backgrounds and have worked to organize and helped run events ranging from small seminars to major international conferences. I serve on editorial boards and have taken up a number of service roles. Recently, I submitted an essay to the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints in support of naming John Henry Newman a Doctor of the Church. I have been immersed in archives for the last decade, exploring documentation in the US, Scotland, Italy, Germany, and (especially) England and Rome. My next major research project, a study of English-speaking Catholics in the age of Enlightenment and Revolution, draws on years of this work, and makes connections from Baltimore to Rome, and from London to Sydney.
I am enthusiastic about collaboration and have helped build strong international networks with historians and theologians in the US, Europe, the Americas, and Australia. I would be delighted to serve on the ACHA Executive Council.