The history of science provides a set of tools and methods for investigating the creation of scientific knowledge. The history of science seeks to understand: Why people have bothered to investigate the natural world. How they have conducted that investigation. What they have learned through that investigation. And to what use they have put this newly created knowledge.

My own research examines this nexus of questions in the context of Early Modern Europe, Central Europe, and the late Byzantine Empire. I study the concrete social practices by which certain systems of knowledge about the natural world become authoritative and scientific. In particular, I study how knowledge is inscribed in instruments, how it is collected, displayed, and deployed by institutions, and how it is aligned with certain political and social agendas. My work reveals how and why patrons of scientific knowledge sought, identified, and supported particular knowledge practices, and how their support advanced certain systems of knowledge and modes of innovation.

All my work is motivated by a core set of questions that examine the conventional categories that we use to construct our histories, categories such as modern and pre-modern, rational and irrational, or East and West. The histories we tell about science are not as rich as they could be because we tend to neglect practices and cultures that do not fit easily into these categories.

My research projects currently fall into three related areas:

• Astrology in the Holy Roman Empire,
• Scientific knowledge in the late Byzantine Empire,
• Science and politics in Renaissance Hungary.