My archaeological career began at the University of Birmingham, where I obtained my bachelors degree in archaeology in 2008. I remained at Birmingham to study for an MPhil in archaeological practice, which I completed in 2010. During this time I also worked for two commercial archaeology units on a full-time basis, participating in excavations across the midlands and the south east of England.
In November 2010 I enrolled at the University of Aberdeen to study for a PhD in Archaeology, which I initially undertook from Herefordshire before moving to London. My thesis considered the evidence for conflict in Viking Age England, focusing specifically on the area colonised and occupied by the Scandinavians during the 9th and 10th centuries (an area referred to by some scholars as the ‘Danelaw’).
Between February 2014 and December 2016 I was a postdoctoral research fellow in the Human Evolutionary Studies Program at Simon Fraser University, Canada, and I was lucky enough to spend two years living and working in Vancouver. In 2017, I returned to Europe in order to take up a position as a researcher at Uppsala University, where I was mainly engaged in conducting research on slavery in Viking-Age Scandinavia and early medieval Europe as part of the Swedish Research Council-funded project, The Viking Phenomenon. Since moving to Sweden, I have spent considerable time abroad conducting research as a Matariki exchange fellow at Dartmouth College (2018), a visiting postdoctoral scholar at the University of Pittsburgh (2018-19), a visiting research fellow at the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies (University of Iceland, 2021), and as a research fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study, Durham University (2026). I was awarded my docentur/associate professor status in 2021.
As of August 2026, I work as an Associate Professor in Nordic Late Iron Age archaeology at the University of Bergen.