Bio

I’m co-CEO of Digital Scholar, a nonprofit corporation which develops free and open-source software for research and cultural heritage communities. At DS I direct Zotero, the popular research platform and Tropy, the archival photography application. I’m also currently a visiting professor at the University of Richmond and professor at the University of Luxembourg.

After receiving my bachelor’s degree from Yale with majors in economics and history, I spent three years working as a systems engineer at IBM developing web application prototypes and helping to sell big iron. I then earned my doctorate in history from the University of Michigan. Until 2019 I was Director of Research at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (RRCHNM). I’ve received research fellowships and funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the National Science Foundation, the Fulbright Program, the Social Science Research Council, and the Luxembourg National Research Fund.

The blog’s title comes from an eighteenth-century cookbook’s absurd description of a French cook and his extravagant creations: “The story of his assiette of popes-eyes, the quintessence of ham for sauce, and the gravy of twenty-two partridges for sauce for a brace, was always beyond the credit of any sensible person.” ¹

1. William Verral, A Complete System of Cookery (London, 1759). ↩