I hold a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature and Religion from Carleton University (1993) in Ottawa, Ontario, a Master’s of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School (1998) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a Ph.D. in Religion from Harvard University (2005). Upon graduation from Harvard, I immediately began working at the University of Ottawa, where I have remained ever since, teaching a wide variety of courses in religious studies and religious history in both English and French. I received tenure and promotion to Associate Professor in 2009 and became a Full Professor in 2016.

In addition to my “day job” at the University of Ottawa, I have also taught overseas at Trier University in Germany and served as an Expert Witness for Justice Canada on a case involving the importation of Catholic relics. I am also currently producing a radio documentary exploring the life of Pierre-Anthoine Pastedechouan, the Indigenous child who was subject of my first book, The Betrayal of Faith: The Tragic Journey of a Colonial Native Convert (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007) for CBC Radio’s Ideas program.

Throughout my career, it has been my great privilege to receive a number of honours for my teaching, research and writing. In 2018 I received the Faculty of Arts Distinguished Teaching Award from the University of Ottawa. Six years earlier, in 2012, I was honoured as their Young Researcher of the Year. In my seventeen-year career, I have also received research funding from Notre Dame University, la Fondation Maison de Sciences de l’Homme, the Camargo Foundation, The France-Canada Research Fund, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Ministry of Canadian Heritage, the American Philosophical Society, the Canadian Federation for the Humanities, and the Whiting Foundation.

Both of my scholarly monographs (The Death and Afterlife of the North American Martyrs (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013 and The Betrayal of Faith) have been widely and favorably reviewed in academic journals. Betrayal also won two awards, the Best First Book in the History of Religions, awarded by the American Academy of Religion, and the Alf Andrew Heggoy Prize for the Best Book in French Colonial History, given by the French Colonial Historical Society.

In addition to teaching, research, and writing, I also enjoy contributing to the field in other ways. I have served since 2009 on the Advisory Board of the "Lived Catholicism" Book Series of Fordham University Press, and routinely sit on ad-hoc committees for bodies such as the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and the Social Sciences, SSHRC, and the AAR. I peer- review articles for scholarly journals such as Church History, The William and Mary Quarterly, and The Journal of Early Modern History and review book manuscripts for university presses such as those of Princeton, Fordham, and McGill-Queen’s. I have also served as an external evaluator in tenure and/or promotion cases at the University of Saint Louis (in Missouri), the University of Alberta (in Edmonton), and Creighton University (in Nebraska).