Research

Some thematic areas of research.

18th-Century History of Science & Medicine (esp. in Scotland)

How were medical and natural philosophical ideas organized, taught, and transmitted in the long eighteenth century? I investigate knowledge systems, pedagogical practices, and intellectual networks, particularly in the Scottish Enlightenment.

Key Areas

  • The life and work of Dr. William Cullen (1712-1790)
  • Scottish medical education and scientific societies
  • David Hume, natural philosophy, and medicine
  • Chemical work of Joseph Black

Digital Humanities

How can computational methods help us read, organise, and visualise historical corpora? I develop tools and workflows for text analysis, network visualisation, and corpus annotation—built to answer specific research questions rather than as ends in themselves.

Key Areas

  • NLP: topic modeling, text re-use
  • Search: keyword and semantic search, Big Data
  • Interactive visualisations: networks, timelines, thematic maps
  • Toolkits: computer vision, transcription and annotation tools

Research Software Engineering

I build native macOS applications that solve specific problems I encounter in my own historical research and writing, which may be helpful to others.

Key Areas

  • Working with manuscripts: handwriting comparison, manuscript analysis
  • Biographical research: Tools to automate and streamline biographical research
  • Research workflows: Making the process of conducting research and creating scholarship more efficient
  • End-to-end digitisation (transcriptions and annotation) tools
  • Tools to support the creation of scholarly editions