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Hello! 👋 New instance, so official #introduction.

I'm a #history professor who researches and writes on the German lands (Germany, Switzerland, Austria, a bit of what is now France) in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. I'm interested in how people made sense of a changing world, and how their choices affected those changes.

My first book, _The German Discovery of the World: Renaissance Encounters with the Strange and Marvelous_ (UVA Press, 2008) examined the how humanists, mapmakers, merchants, and moralists responded to Portuguese and Spanish overseas empires.

My current research investigates what it meant to be German in the context of the multiethnic, transnational Holy Roman Empire.

I post about history (all kinds) and the place and point of universities (mostly US). I'm a sucker for a well-researched policy analysis.

I boost posts about protests, unions, Bandcamp Friday, and other collective efforts to improve people's lives. And, of course, cats.