I study the circulation of scientific objects and natural knowledge throughout central and western Eurasia and north Africa, from antiquity into the early modern period. I have a particular interest in how scientific ideas, practices, and objects traveled and were adapted to new settings, and philosophical treatises, archival material, literary texts, lyric, material objects, and images all inform my work. My first book, Medieval Robots: Mechanism, Magic, Nature, and Art (Penn, 2015), explored the history of automata in medieval Latin culture, where they appeared as gifts from foreign rulers in Baghdad and Damascus and at the courts of Constantinople and Shengdu, and demonstrated that artificial people and animals were ubiquitous in medieval culture, and that they were used to pose questions about identity, liveliness, and the ethics of knowledge and creation. My research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the Huntington Library, the Max-Planck-Institute for the History of Science, Harvard University/Villa I Tatti, and other institutions. I have also published articles on the history of automata, the history of timekeeping technology, Roger Bacon and courtly science, pharmacobotany, and on concepts of artificial intelligence in the Middle Ages.

I am currently occupied with several projects: a reapprpaisal of the historiography of science and the importance of the medieval period, a study of monumental astronomical clocks and Christian temporality in late medieval Europe, a collaborative project (with Pamela Long) on Leonardo's Madrid Codex, and a study of courtly science in the medieval world.