Assistant Professor of History and Judaic Studies
He/him/his
About
My research centers on the social and legal history of the Iberian world between the 13th and 16th centuries. I am particularly interested in how non-elites used courts, judicial procedures, and legal records to navigate social conflicts and power relations within their communities. My current book project, titled "Justice for the People: Petitions, State Power, and Legal Culture in the Crown of Castile, c.1385-1516", examines the Castilian system of petition and response to revisit questions of state formation, access to justice for non-elites, and the place of Jews and Muslims in Christian society. Apart from this monograph, I have been working on the history of Jewish converts and their descendants ("the conversos") in fifteenth-century Iberia, the legal ritual known as "requerimiento", and the prosecution of adultery in Castile.
Publications:
"The Requerimiento in the Old World: Making Demands and Keeping Records in the Legal Culture of Late Medieval Castile." Law and History Review 40, no.1 (2022): 37-62.
"Defining 'Conversos' in Fifteenth-Century Castile: The Making of a Controversial Category." Speculum 97, no.3 (2022): 609-648. [With Yosi Yisraeli].
"The Politics of Records: Petitions and Depositions in the Legal Struggle of a Fifteenth-Century Converso." Viator 48, no.2 (2017): 279-303.
"Between Tyranny and the Commonwealth: Political Discourses and the Framing of Violence Against Conversos in the Gesta Hispaniensia of Alfonso de Palencia." In Contested Inter-Religious Conversion int he Medieval World, eds. Yaniv Fox and Yosi Yisraeli, 229-244. New York: Routledge, 2016.
Courses:
Fall 2022. The Jews of Medieval Spain (Judaic Studies 150 / History 197).
