My current work is located in a number of intersecting fields: nineteenth-century literature, Jewish studies, digital humanities, public humanities, and Caribbean studies. My first book, English Origins, Jewish Discourse, and the Nineteenth-Century British Novel (Pess State Press, 2009), examines literary responses to Jewish and Christian religious and historical affiliations. Recently I've completed two essay collections, Fear, Loathing, and Victorian Xenophobia (Ohio State University Press, 2013) and Caribbean Jewish Crossings: Literary History and Creative Practice (University of Virginia Press, 2019) in which I have an essay on the Jamaican Jewish writer, Philip Cohen Labatt (1823-1854) and his use of the trickster figure. I'm currently completing The Archive's East End, a study of archival theory and the nineteenth-century East End of London. A corresponding digital project, The Lyon Archive, includes digital editions of texts from the Lyon Family Archive, interactive maps, podcast interviews with family members, and data visualizations of East End publications and their Atlantic connections. Through this work I've had opportunities to collaborate on a multi-year public-humanities research project to create a permanent archive of Jamaican Jewish cemeteries. 

I serve as the Director of Digital Humanities in the College of Arts and Sciences. In 2017 I helped create a minor in Digital Humanities. 

My teaching areas of interest include the nineteenth-century novel, digital humanities, public humanities, archival theory and fiction, Jewish literary culture, and nineteenth-century book history and culture.