About Me
Archives, belief, and the history of the unseen
I'm an archivist, historian, and author working at the intersection of memory, belief, and the paranormal. My research focuses on Spiritualism — the nineteenth- and twentieth-century movement built on the conviction that the dead can, and do, communicate with the living — and on how its history has been recorded, forgotten, and rediscovered.
I earned my PhD in History from the University of Waterloo, where my doctoral dissertation traced the life of Maurice Barbanell, the medium behind Silver Birch — one of the most influential spirit guides in Spiritualist history. Barbanell devoted 61 years to the movement and was arguably its leading twentieth-century voice, yet his name has largely faded from the story he helped write. That gap is what led me to spend the last several years bringing him back into the historical record — work that's now becoming my first book, Silver Birch's Medium: Maurice Barbanell & Twentieth-Century Spiritualism, out September 2026.
I’ve also published on the history of spiritualism and mediumship, including "Voices Beyond the Veil: Maurice Barbanell, Racialized Spirits, and the Colonial Unconscious" (2025), which explores the racialized construction of spirit guides and the cultural tensions that shaped modern spiritualist belief. The article is available to read online.
Archives are where I do most of my digging. I currently serve as Head of Special Collections and Archives at Clemson University in South Carolina. Before that, I held the same role at the University of Waterloo, and earlier in my career I worked with the archives of the Canadian Pacific Railway in Montreal, as well as at McGill University's Archives and McGill University Health Centre. Along the way, I've had the chance to steward some genuinely remarkable collections, including over 100 reel-to-reel recordings of séances held by the medium Thomas Lacey in Kitchener, Ontario.
Originally from London, England, I now live and work in South Carolina, though the research takes me, quite literally, into other worlds. Beyond the archive, I talk about this work regularly on podcasts and in public conversations, exploring subjects like spirit guides, mediumship, and the controversies of fraud and skepticism that have followed Spiritualism since its beginnings.
I should say that I'm not just a historian of belief. I've long felt there's more to existence than what we can see and measure, and that perspective shapes how I approach this research: with the rigor of an archivist, but also the curiosity of someone who takes the subject seriously on its own terms.
Research interests: Spiritualism and psychical research; media and print culture; archives and memory; religious history; alternative belief systems; public history and archival interpretation.