My current project is Mobility and Place: Syrian migrants and their gods in the Roman world, a bottom-up exploration of Syrian migration in the Graeco-Roman world through the lens of religion: examining the evidence for communities of Syrians across the Roman world, the beliefs they took with them; and the different ways that diaspora Syrian communities established places and relationships for themselves in new contexts.

In related current and future research, I am exploring social emotion, memory and migration through epigraphy, material culture, landscape and deep mapping; the texturing of sacred spaces through emotion and experience, and ways of accessing and representing this to heritage audiences; and sacred mountains and walking as part of sacred expression, sacred work, and pilgrimage practice.

Previously, I have looked at the cults of Jupiter Dolichenus and Theos Hypsistos; and also at the spread of ideas in Diaspora Judaism. My book on this subject, Religious Networks in the Roman Empire: The Spread of New Ideas, was published by Cambridge University Press in December 2013 and was a finalist in the American Academy of Religion’s book prize, Best First Book in the History of Religions 2014. I received my PhD in November 2008 from the University of Exeter, where I was part of Stephen Mitchell’s AHRC-funded project, Pagan Monotheism in its Intellectual Context. I received my MPhil in Classical Art and Archaeology from the University of Cambridge, where I wrote my thesis on Apollo in Asia Minor. My BA was in Classical Civilisation and Philosophy from the University of Manchester.