She received her PhD from the Department of History at the University of Chicago. She is a former Harper&#8211;Schmidt Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Chicago and the holder of a number of fellowships from the National Science Foundation, the Newberry Library, the Getty Research Institute, and the Wolfsonian Museum. Her research focuses on modern France and the French empire, and she is particularly interested in the way that colonialism shaped the fundamental features of modern French life, whether citizenship and welfare, or consumer habits, hygiene, and economic tools. She is currently at work on a new book-length project on French colonial commodities entitled Everyday Colonialism: Commodities of Empire and the Making of Modern France.