Stefan Stantchev earned his doctorate in history at the University of Michigan in 2009 and has since been employed as Assistant Professor (2009-15) and Associate Professor (2015-) at Arizona State University. Stantchev's research interests focus on the political, religious, and economic factors that shaped human relations throughout the Mediterranean (ca. 1000-ca. 1600). Stantchev prefers to work with voluminous source material, chiefly Venetian and Genoese archival and narrative sources, papal letters, and canon law commentaries. Stantchev's previous publications include Spiritual Rationality: Papal Embargo as Cultural Practice (Oxford University Press, 2014) as well as book chapters and articles published with Cambridge, Palgrave, and Brill, among others.