Professor, Historian, and Digital Humanist
I am an expert in the cultural, religious, and intellectual developments across medieval Europe and the Mediterranean World, with a special emphasis on Christian, Jewish, and Islamic interrelations. I am a specialist in the 2,500 year history of Sephardic Jews and their descendents — from Phoenician Spain to Spanish America.
An archival and manuscript specialist, I use digital tools — immersive reality, artificial intelligence, metadata rich collections, and citizen science — I research, teach, and communicate using novel methods that awaken history for the public and students.
Expertise and Experience
Lead immersive storytelling with VR/AR — Co-directed the NEH-funded Immersive Global Middle Ages Institute (2021–23) and built public-facing demos like Virtual Plasencia and Augmented Reflections that turn history into walk-through experiences.
Mobilize citizen scholars for manuscript discovery — Created the Deciphering Secrets MOOCs/Zooniverse effort, engaging \~50,000 learners to transcribe medieval documents and gain hands-on paleography skills while building an open digital collection.
Illuminate Sephardic & converso histories for broad audiences — Author of Creating Conversos: The Carvajal–Santa María Family in Early Modern Spain and co-curator of the Fractured Faiths: Spanish Judaism, The Inquisition, and New World Identities museum exhibition; deliver dynamic talks, exhibits, and family-history investigations connecting archives to lived identities.
Apply ethical, explainable AI to humanistic research — Advise the BADDO project (UC3M) to build context-aware AI for historiography; teach audiences how AI can accelerate source analysis while keeping scholarly judgment and transparency at the center.
Conduct fieldwork across the Mediterranean & the Americas — Research in 40+ archives (Spain, Portugal, the Vatican, Mexico, Bolivia, U.S.) to evaluate manuscripts and material culture for museums, educators, and families.
Convene inclusive, international collaborations — Found the Plus Ultra Collective and serve on the America&Spain250 commission; organize workshops and public programs that bridge universities, cultural institutions, and communities.
Bring global training and recognition to the classroom and public — CONEX Marie Curie Fellow at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (2015–18) and Professor of History at the University of Colorado; projects supported by national and European funders and shared widely through lectures and open courses.
Virtual Plasencia, Spain: The Medieval Vines of Three Faiths (co-op strategy)
Cultivate vineyards across 15th-century Plasencia, managing production and tithes while fostering collaboration between diverse religious communities. Navigate shared resources and social dynamics, ensuring interfaith trust and collective prosperity to prevent economic and social collapse (A Runway Game World)
A bit of my work
Collaborative and Core Efforts
Plus Ultra Collective
The Plus Ultra Collective combines humanistic studies and technology to deepen understanding of historical examples of intercultural interchange in the Americas, Iberia, and the Mediterranean World.
Immersive Global
Middle Ages
Deciphering Secrets:
Unlocking the Manuscripts
of Medieval Spain
Tne Immersive Global Middle Ages Institute advanced digital humanities, integrating immersive technology with traditional, global, multidisciplinary medieval studies.
A collaborative citizen science project focused on revealing the inter-religious relations of Jews, Christians, Muslims, and religious converts in medieval Spain.
BADDO
Bringing AI to the Discovery of Historiographical Data to Overcome Traditional Barriers, a study to assess the extent to which human expertise influences the objectivity and accuracy of outcomes compared to AI-generated results.
The Queen Sofía
Spanish Institute: America&Spain250
The organizations and individuals behind this initiative are developing educational programs and cultural activities across United States in celebration of 250 years of the relationship between the USA, Spain, and the Spanish-speaking world.
Sephardic Ancestry
A collection of original scholarly writings, primary sources, and peer-reviewed research that illuminates the ancestry amd history of Sephardic Jews from Spain, Portugal, as well as their diasporic migrations after 1492.
Virtual Plasencia
Virtual Plasencia is collaborative entity that is digitally recreating the virtual world of medieval Plasencia, Spain. Windows OS Virtual Plasencia App: Download here (200 Mb). Digital narrative on YouTube.com: View “La Mota”
La Reimaginación de la Edad Media Global:
Un enfoque de inteligencia artificial para explorar los intercambios culturales
Reimagining the Global Middle Ages: An Artificial Intelligence Approach to Exploring Cultural Exchanges
Let's connect
I look forward to hearing from you.
