Welcome to a place between the medieval and the modern

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My doctoral dissertation investigated the production and patronage of portable altars in Lower Saxony between 1050 and 1195 CE. I began the Medieval Portable Altar Database while traveling through Germany and Belgium, researching and photographing the 120+ medieval portable altars that survive.

I defended my dissertation in May 2021. Just out of graduate school, in the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, on an adjunct salary, I could not return to Europe to continue the research. In the meantime, I began to examine the use of portable altar kits by United States chaplains in the 20th century.

I now research portable devotion, focusing on portable altars and liturgical objects, in two eras: the Central Middle Ages in Western Europe and the World Wars in the US military. With these two strands of inquiry, I have two current book projects: Portable Altars, Local Politics, and Spiritual Patronage in Medieval Saxony, c.1000-1195, and Supplying the Sacred: Portable Mass Kits, American Catholics, and Military Chaplains in World War I.

My research has been generously supported by the Trinity University Humanities Collective “Public Humanities Faculty Fellowship,” the Trinity University Department of History, the Mellon Initiative, the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism, and the American Academy of Religion. In March 2025, I was featured in the AAR’s “Member Spotlight.”

Looking for my research on chaplains’ kits?

Head to portabledevotion.com.