My research is concerned with the practices and ideas of Christianity in the medieval West - liturgy and worship, sanctity and hagiography, popular devotion, and most importantly, the ways that these intersected in the lives of medieval people to create a shared religious experience. The works of Caroline Walker Bynum and M. Cecilia Gaposchkin have had a formative influence on my understanding of what this historical inquiry ought to look like, and I’m a big admirer of their scholarship.

Before coming to Catholic University, I earned a B.A. in History and Political Science from A&M University-Kingsville in my native Texas, where I dabbled in Bhutanese public policy research before ultimately becoming a medievalist. Though I spend most of my time lamenting how much better everything was in Texas (barring the weather and perhaps fauna), I’m also interested in academics’ responsibilities both in and outside of the classroom, and more specifically the nature of Catholic academic life in the present day.

Highlights

Brown, Nicholas, Jeffrey Glick, and Nirmal Goswami, “Spirituality and Happiness: How Bhutan Views Governance and Public Policy.” Asian Profile 46, no. 1 (March 2018): 13-27.

Brown, Nicholas, Daryl Jackson, and Hannah Jones. “Time in a Medieval Manuscript: Bringing Digital Tools to Bear in Historical Inquiry,” presented to Bridging the Spectrum: A Symposium on Scholarship and Practice in Library and Information Science (February 2020).

“Reading Hildegard through Hildegard: Compositional Strategy in Theodoric of Echternach’s Vita Sanctae Hildegardis Virginis.” Accepted to Forty-Sixth Annual Sewanee Medieval Colloquium (April 2020, cancelled).