I have worked in over twenty archives and libraries in the U.S., Spain, and France. My book, The Basque Seroras, was published with Cornell University Press in 2020.
Funding from CLIR-Mellon and the American Catholic Historical Association have supported short and long research expeditions, and I am eager to pass along my knowledge of working in national, private, closed, and religious archives to new and emerging researchers. Feel free to contact me if you are thinking of working in archives and libraries in Spain, and especially the Basque Country and Navarre. I have good contacts at many research sites, and I would be happy to talk to you about my research experiences.
Ongoing book projects
Pilgrim, Pastor, Pauper, Spy: The Case of Pierre de Praxelier
I embrace the ways in which the past puts into perspective the human costs of modern crises and anxieties, and as I pursue new projects, I draw inspiration from the topics that currently captivate my students. To that end, my next book project examines the hostilities and increasing culture of fear along the Navarrese border on the eve of the Franco-Spanish War. My human source into this conflict is an epileptic and amnesiac French priest named Don Pierre de Praxelier who was captured and tried as a spy as he passed through Navarre on the way to Santiago de Compostela. Arrested by villagers in Sangüesa and investigated by the Diocese of Pamplona using a variety of surprisingly sophisticated forensic methods, the trial addresses the roles gender, illness, poverty, and foreignness played as villagers promoted their own vision of national security.
Parish and Empire: Law and Society in Northern Spain, 1540-1670. An Anthology of Sources
This co-edited anthology of primary sources examines the intersections of law, local communities, and empire, and thus illuminates the ways in which common people turned to the law to solve problems of all sorts. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, every corner of Iberia had multiple legal courts that were simultaneously designated to investigate religious and secular offenses: the Spanish Inquisition; the court system overseen by the nearest bishop; and the secular court system, divided among royal tribunals, señorial audiences, notarial districts, and city courts. The fact that modern scholars traditionally study only one of those jurisdictions at a time has led to an incomplete understanding of the range of priorities and processes of different legal authorities; more importantly, our tendency to study a single jurisdiction also has obscured our awareness of how ordinary men, women, and children used the legal systems at their disposal. This anthology responds to a lacuna by smoothly bringing together legal documents from both elite and popular contexts. It offers a balanced portrait of how early modern justice functioned, and was consumed, mediated, and deflected on a daily basis.
Death in the Indies: The Creation of the Basque Diaspora in the Age of the Conquest
I am also engaged in several longer term projects, including a study of trans-Atlantic connections between the Basque Country and the New World and the Philippines through testamentary bequests and pious remittances. Basque immigrants sailed to the New World with the intention of returning home, but often it was only their wealth that made it back to their natal communities. When these immigrants left complicated bequests, including plans for rotating chaplaincies at local shrines or elaborate anniversary masses, they displayed a very tangible understanding of the spiritual geographies they had left behind; however, after decades of absence, these last wishes were often met with confusion or indifference by heirs who had little or no memory of their long-lost relatives. Such testamentary bequests – and the conflicts they occasioned – demonstrate an ongoing and very real sense of connection to place which was not lost over time, but rather was enhanced through the incorporation of American commodities.