My research interests encompass the social and cultural history of early modern South Asia, 1500-1800. The ways in which religious, linguistic, and status identities shaped the political and cultural institutions of the Mughal period is central to my work. My undergraduate teaching ranges from classes in South Asian history, the History of Medieval and Mughal India, to classes in Environmental History. In the past I have also offered graduate level classes on the interdisciplinary study of South Asia, Comparative Islam, and Historiography. As an early modernist who works with literary and visual sources, my work is interdisciplinary, and as a result I have welcomed the opportunity to work with colleagues in other disciplines. I have an adjunct affiliation with the Near Eastern Languages and Civilization Department (URL: http://depts.washington.edu/nelc/) and also am a member of the faculty at the South Asia Center in the Jackson School of International Studies (URL: http://jsis.washington.edu/soasia/). My first book, When Sparrows Became Hawks: the Making of Khalsa Martial Tradition examined the extraordinary transformation of North Indian peasants into high-status warriors as they became members of the Sikh warrior order, the Khalsa. My analysis of underutilized Persian and Punjabi sources demonstrated that the shaping of new social identities, such as that of the Sikh warrior, could not be understood solely through an economic analysis of the rise of peasant soldiers, or through a study of the religious beliefs of Sikhs. The political and economic aspirations of individual Sikhs had a profound effect on the diverse Sikh communities, as well as the lives of their rivals and neighbors. The conflicts and debates sparked by the dramatic social mobility of the eighteenth century fueled a wider military conflict with regional rivals in North India. But just as importantly, violent clashes between these groups also led to attempts to create some common ground between feuding parties. New alliances were negotiated, and Sikh warriors also became receptive to adapting their own practices to the dominant values of other elite warrior communities. Social conflict and rupture has always been fodder for historians, but the processes by which communities negotiate alliances that resolve conflict are less well studied. An important contribution of my book is a detailed analysis of such processes, and particularly the role of cultural innovation, including new ceremonies, public displays, and the shaping of new imagined worlds in these reconciliations.