About Me
Professionally I spend much of my time studying the military past. My research looks at ways in which allies and military partners develop systems that make fighting together, easier. While my dissertation focused on coalition warfare in the Mediterranean during World War II, I’m interested in military multilateralism, strategy, operations, interoperability, and military integration writ large.
During graduate school I was lucky to participate in staff rides on battlefields ranging from Sicily to the eastern battlefields of the American Civil War, present at history conferences on both sides of the Atlantic, serve for four years as a Graduate Teaching Assistant and Discussion Section Leader, and attend a monthlong military history and professional development seminar in Lexington, Virgina hosted by the Society for Military History.
I’m currently employed by the George C. Marshall Foundation as a member of the team digitizing the papers of the foundation’s namesake, U.S. Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall. On the side, I occasionally write scripts on historical and military topics for popular YouTube channels with a combined audience of more than 15 million viewers. Here on my personal site I study contemporary and historic instances of military cooperation. I post my research under the aegis of the Institute for the Study of Coalitions, Alliances, and Military Partnerships (ISCAMP), a non-existent think tank that nevertheless lends the whole enterprise a more official feel.
Previously, I was a non-resident Hans J. Morgenthau Fellow in Grand Strategy at the University of Notre Dame, a World Politics and Statecraft Fellow at the Smith Richardson Foundation, and a Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellow for the study of advanced-level Portuguese. My academic work has been published in Military Review, Occupied Italy, Origins, The Arctic Institute, On Point: The Journal of Army History and other outlets. Between 2017–18, Dr. Reid Neilson and I edited the travel diary of Elder David O. McKay, a Latter-day Saint Apostle who conducted a groundbreaking transpacific missionary tour between 1920–21. The book, Pacific Apostle, was published by University of Illinois Press in 2020. At present, I am editing a soldier-memoir entitled Campaigning with the Buffs: A Dane’s Odyssey through Italy from Anzio to the Alps. The memoir recounts the remarkable transnational journey of Aage Juul, a Danish officer in British uniform during the Italian campaign of World War II.
When I’m not in the archives, writing, or researching, I work as a project manager and sales executive at Ballyhoo, a family-owned large-format print and graphics company in the Pacific Northwest. We specialize in custom signage, event graphics, and sponsorship campaigns and work with some of the largest corporate events, event organizers, and creative teams across the U.S. We print on virtually anything–and at any scale.
Today we live on a working farm in Washington state where our first child has been joined by a second. We have a cat that acts like a dog, an endless list of projects to keep us busy, and loving family members on both sides just a short drive away. In my spare time I like to get out into nature and explore the Pacific Northwest with my wife and our two wonderful children. I’m an amateur hobbyist in many respects—a beginner ham radio operator (KK7KAQ), fly fisherman, farmhand, stamp collector, fountain pen enthusiast, scale modeler, rockhound, language learner, and nature photographer—but I’m intensely curious about each and, perhaps more than anything, simply love learning new things.
Tunisia-bound French soldiers shake hands with their American allies in Algeria, 1943
Proposing to Claire in Switzerland in early June 2017.