I study the history of the late 19th and 20th century United States with a special interest in stories of information, communication, science, and technology.

My book, The People’s Network, tells the story of the telephone in the United States and Canada before the triumph of the Bell System: the rise and fall of an independent telephone movement and the forgotten struggle for a more democratic communications regime. The People’s Network won the 2016 Albert B. Corey Prize, jointly awarded by the American Historical Association and the Canadian Historical Association for the best book in the last two years on the history of Canada and the United States.

I am currently writing a cultural history of thermodynamics and the dream of perpetual motion, centered on the Keely Motor, a notorious water-powered engine allegedly invented by John Worrell Keely in 1873. This project grows out of my earlier SSHRC-funded research on pseudoscience in 19th-century America. In 2022, I received the Abbott Payson Usher Prize from the Society for the History of Technology for my article on Keely's motor, “Sympathetic Physics: The Keely Motor and The Laws of Thermodynamics in Nineteenth Century Culture.”

I also study the history of games and the use of games and simulations in teaching history. Between 2011 and 2013, I co-designed and directed Tecumseh Lies Here, an augmented reality game designed to teach critical historical thinking while exploring the history of the War of 1812.