Originally trained as an historian of physics, his first book looked at the history of theoretical physics in Germany in the early twentieth century (Crafting the Quantum: Arnold Sommerfeld and the Practice of Theory, 1890-1926. MIT, 2010). His current work examines the history of medicine, science, and colonialism. The manuscript is titled Difference and Disease: Race, Medicine, and Locality in the Eighteenth Century British Empire. He has edited, and written an introduction for, a special issue of Postcolonial Studies on “Science, Colonialism, and the Postcolonial” (2009) and a Forum section of Isis entitled “Re-Locating Race” (2014). His contribution to the latter was entitled “Materialism, Slavery, and the History of Jamaica.” He currently serves on the Osiris editorial board and as an advisory editor for Isis.