My PhD is from The Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY), where I majored in Early Christian and Byzantine Art and Architecture, with minors in Non-Western Art and Architecture and Italian Renaissance Art and Architecture. I also completed an interdisciplinary certificate in Medieval Studies. I earned an MA in art history from Brooklyn College, and a BFA in graphic design from Auburn University.

My approach to academic service has focused on inclusiveness, with an emphasis on expanding disciplinary boundaries. For instance, the College Art Association Task Force on the Annual Conference (to which I was nominated April-November 2015) looked for ways to support early career researchers and digital art historians.

As Rector (2010-2011) and conference committee member of the Pearl Kibre Medieval Study, I helped further Byzantine and Islamic studies as important additions to the group and facilitated the inclusion of digital humanities into our “New Media and the Middle Ages” conference (Spring 2013). In the same vein, I proposed the option of Ancient Greek as an alternative to the certificate’s Latin requirement while serving as elected student representative to the Medieval Studies Certificate Program Advisory Committee at the GC (Fall 2011-Spring 2013); the committee agreed, strengthening the roles that scholars of the eastern Mediterranean can play in our certificate program.