I am originally from beautiful Nashville, Tennessee in the United States, where I began my university career studying radio and communications with a plan to enter the music industry. An inspirational history professor at a community college led me to change my major to history and I went on to study history and religious studies at the Honors College at Western Kentucky University. At the end of my undergraduate career, I developed an interest in Arabic that shaped the next decade of my life. After graduating, I travelled, worked, or studied in Tunisia, Yemen, Egypt, Oman, Syria, Turkey, Lebanon, and Morocco before returning to academia and beginning my PhD at the University of Michigan. I then had the amazing opportunity to carry out thesis-related fieldwork in Tunisia, Algeria, Ukraine, Poland, Italy, and France. I arrived at AUI in the fall of 2016, accompanied by my wife Sarah, my daughter Sophia, and my cat Hannibal.