I am currently a doctoral student and IGERT Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Buffalo where I specialize in archaeology. I received my BA in Anthropology at the University of Oklahoma in 2004, and received a NASA Fellowship to attend an intensive training course in GIS immediately following graduation.

My research interests are currently centered on violence, conflict, and spatial cognition. Specifically, I am interested in implementing a cognitive archaeology approach to how societies project power onto landscapes, and how spatial conflict escalates into violent encounters between groups. The scope of my research includes, but is not limited to, territorial demarcation in prehistory, border conflicts and landscape change, the maintenance of special access to natural resources through actual and potential force, cross-boundary raiding, and the functional role of symbolic communication on the battlefield. In regional and chronological terms I focus on the Bronze Age of the transalpine region of Central Europe, though my interests extend into the late Neolithic and early Iron Age as well.