Since completing her doctorate at the University of California, Santa Cruz, she has held postdoctoral fellowships in comparative world history at Colby College and at the University of Pittsburgh's World History Center. She approaches histories of health, disease, and ecology from a global perspective. Her research focuses on disease and ecology in the Mississippi Valley, Gulf South, and Caribbean, and draws connections between the southern United States and colonial Atlantic and South Asia. She can be reached at uengineer@murraystate.edu.