Rachel Brody is an environmental historian and archaeologist of early medieval Europe, studying human-animal relations and the material ecologies of everyday life to understand health, sanitation, and disease in Northwestern Europe. Here at md传媒国产剧 College, as a Visiting Assistant Professor, she teaches courses that are a part of the University鈥檚 Core Curriculum. These include Modern History I and II, and Global Environmental History I.
Dr. Brody鈥檚 book project, Multispecies Communities: An Early Medieval Environmental History of Northwestern Europe c. 600 to 1000 CE, argues that including invertebrates in the histories we write helps us uncover the lifeways of early medieval people living in a post-Roman transitional period when new economies and communities were emerging and settlements were increasing in size and population. The manuscript draws upon her previous career and training as a field archaeologist, allowing her to take an interdisciplinary approach, combining faunal and floral reports with medical texts and law codes to write an environmental history that pulls upon ecological proxies.
Dr. Brody is also the Co-director of the Castles in Communities Archaeological Field School and Research Project located in County Roscommon, Ireland. The project investigates Ballintober Castle and its deserted medieval settlement, placing it within broader narratives of the Anglo-Norman conquest in Ireland. A primary goal of the project is to combine academic research, field school pedagogy, and intensive community engagement to create an inclusive learning environment not only in the classroom but also in the field as public historians and archaeologists.
Prior to her current appointment, Dr. Brody earned her Ph.D. and M.A. in history from md传媒国产剧 College, under the supervision of Professor Robin Fleming. She also holds an A.B. in Classical Near Eastern Archaeology from Bryn Mawr College. As an archaeological field technician, she has worked across the Mid-Atlantic and the Northeast on survey projects and the excavation of historic and prehistoric sites.
