I am a historian of Scotland and England, principally of the later middle ages. I joined the University of Aberdeen as a Lecturer in 2008, became a Senior Lecturer in 2018 and received a Personal Chair in History in the 2023 promotion exercise (April 2024). In summer 2023 I took up the role of Head of History. I am an Honorary Curatorial Fellow to University Museums, and I have previously served in various roles including School Director of Postgraduate Research and Deputy Head of School.

I am primarily interested in Scotland and England in the period 1300-1600, and especially in the ligatures of local societies (including ideas of kinship), relations with ‘centres’ of political power, and frameworks of law and related aspects of government. I am particularly curious about regions typically considered to be ‘peripheral’. I lead the Aberdeen Burgh Records Project which investigates Aberdeen's late medieval civic archives, and much of my work to date has concerned the fifteenth-century Anglo-Scottish borderlands, and the themes of frontiers and conflict. My book, England's Northern Frontier (2020) was joint winner of the Whitfield Prize. 

I was co-producer, historian and supporting writer for the game Strange Sickness, which received a BAFTA Scotland Awards nomination in 2022.

A native of Toronto and a graduate of Queen's University at Kingston, Canada (2001), I completed a MPhil (2002) and PhD (2008) at Trinity Hall, Cambridge.