Vita
2026 – present
Postdoctoral Researcher, Governing the Invisible
2025
International Research Fellow, German Maritime Museum
2024
Visiting Assistant Professor, Sea Education Association
2023 – 2024
Visiting Assistant Professor, Boston College
2016 – 2023
Ph.D. in History and M.A. in Religious Studies, Brown University
Research Interests
As part of the booster group “Governing the Invisible,” Brooke is conducting research on the ecological histories of colonialism, as related to the carbon cycle, through microhistorical life histories of early modern sailing ships. Ships were both the essential means by which colonial projects were carried out, as well as highly complex machines that drew on large and often widespread ecosystems for both their construction and repair. By making use of the Prize Papers archives, and linked repositories, she hopes to trace a set of ships and their myriad ecological relations—from forests and fields to algal and aerial marine life to ports and port workers—throughout their careers, discovering how a single vessel may be understood as part of processes of deforestation, ecological damage, and relation. She is also interested in developing methods of reading microbial life in archives beyond histories of disease.
In addition to her work with Governing the Invisible and the Prize Papers, Brooke also has research interests and experience in environmental histories of religion and religious practice, multispecies relations and encounters, historical ships and shipping, and rot and decay —all related to the ocean.
Highlighted Publications
“Fluid Faith and Oceanic Interaction in the Nineteenth Century,” Worldviews, vol. 30, no. 1 (2026)
“Seabirds, Seafarers, and Navigation Beyond Charts,” in Routledge Handbook of Critical Ocean Studies, Routledge (Paul Foley and Jennifer Silver, eds., 2025)
“Remembering Past Distance: Whaling and Whalers,” Inscriptions vol. 8, no. 1: Navigating the Critical Zone (2025)