He received his B.A. in History and Medieval Studies from the University of California at Santa Barbara)and his M.A. and Ph.D. in History from the University of Toronto. His research area is late medieval and early renaissance intellectual and ecclesiastical history, focusing on Latin florilegia (collections of quotations), early Italian humanism, conciliar sermons (especially eulogies) and ecclesiastical politics, rhetorical theory and practice as it relates to the construction of self and delimitation of audience, pastoral reform in response to heresy, scribal agency in manuscript traditions and editorial agency in early print traditions.