About this site
Hi there! Among the Ruins is a blog about the Middle Ages and modern academic life. For those who don't know me, I graduated with a PhD in medieval history from the Catholic University of America in 2025. My interests lie in understanding the mechanism of politics in medieval society. In the last few years what was a pretty bad academic job market for historians, and specifically medieval historians, has almost completely collapsed. Yet people continue to have a hunger for information about the Middle Ages.
That is where Among the Ruins comes in. I am a historian who is particularly interested in making history more accessible to a broader audience. Not only do I personally want to remain active by writing and publishing on the Middle Ages, but I want to share my expertise and knowledge with others. At the same time I want to build a community of scholars sharing work outside the academy, hence Among the Ruins.
Among the Ruins has several goals: first, to be a place to share my own research. I strongly believe in the value of making scholarship and historical writing accessible to as wide an audience as possible. This does not mean "dumbing it down" but instead respecting the capabilities of the audience.
Second, Among the Ruins can be an antidote to the cynicism and jadedness of the modern internet. It is all too common to see earnestness and passion dismissed. Instead, I want to offer a more positive vision, a place where passion and expertise are applauded and acknowledged. I want the weird, the esoteric, the "not relevant" bits of scholarship.
Third, I can use this as a more permanent space to showcase up and coming scholars as well as scholars working outside the tenure-track or academia. At the same time, it gives me a place to highlight interesting digital humanities work. There are new and innovative projects being created every day, but it is often quite difficult to find them. This is true of regular scholarship too, so I intend to offer reviews and round ups of scholarship.
Finally, while Among the Ruins is not a "political" blog (even if it is often about politics), my own politics are decidedly leftist, albeit not universally: no one person's political ideas are completely coherent. At times I may disagree with leftist viewpoints, but if you are someone who believes in race-science, best look elsewhere. In practice this mostly means I will not platform Nazis, racists, transphobes, etc. when doing interviews and guest essays. What you will get is occasional posts that deal with topical political issues viewed through a historical lens, but that is not my main goal here.
Why Subscribe?
If you choose a free subscription today, you'll get access to the free portions of the website as well as email newsletters about new content when it's available. While most of the content will be free, some posts may require an email signup! Instead of being at the mercy of an algorithm, you can make sure you don't miss my posts by signing up. It also lets me know that there is an audience for this type of project.
Running this site costs money so I have added a paid option. Right now there is only one option, which I am calling an "Early Supporter" tier. In the future I will add more tiers (assuming subscriptions make that viable). In the interest of keeping scholarship as accessible as possible, most of the content will be free. Paid subscriptions will have some benefits, but mostly it is to help me continue to research and write. Free subscriptions let me know people value my work, so however you subscribe, thank you!
Why Ghost?
Those following me for a while may remember this was originally hosted on Substack. While I have maintained my presence there for now, my goal is to move off Substack fully once this site becomes financially viable and able to support more subscribers. They take 10% of all subscription revenue, which means subscribing here means more of your money goes to directly supporting me. For transparency here is how the money works:
Ghost costs me $108 a year. Only two subscribers at $65 a year means I can continue to run the site! Substack takes 10% of your revenue, meaning that the amount I "make" depends on how many subscribers I have:
The breakpoint is 17 subscribers at $65 a year. I wrote a pretty basic Python script to do the math for me. You can play with the numbers yourself based on different numbers of yearly costs, the total number of subscribers, etc.
ghostCost = 108 #the cost of Ghost per year. For the basic plan this is $108 a year and gives you up to 500 subscribers.
substackCut = .9 #the percentage Substack takes from each subscription.
numSubscribers = 1
subscriberVal = 65 #How much a yearly susbcription is worth.
ghostRev = 0
substackRev = 0
totalSubscribers = 50 #the total subscribers you have
while (numSubscribers <= totalSubscribers):
substackRev = (numSubscribers*subscriberVal)*substackCut
ghostRev = (numSubscribers*subscriberVal)-ghostCost
if(ghostRev >= substackRev):
print(numSubscribers)
break
numSubscribers = numSubscribers + 1The basic Ghost plan lets you have up to 500 subscribers (both paid and free), after that the price jumps to $300 a year. At that point you need 47 paid subscribers to make more money on Ghost. This is partially why I am not moving my Substack followers over immediately, because there I have 465 subscribers. I want to start fresh here and build up some subscribers first, before moving the rest over.
This is somewhat of an experiment, so none of this should be considered binding. I will do my best to reliably produce pieces of writing, but I am not in the business of creating "Content." Subscribing means investing in research and expertise, which also means investing in "slowness." The pace of posts should be about every two weeks, with occasional posts in between, but life and other obligations will inevitably come up. You should subscribe if you value sustainable working conditions, I hope you do!
Start your own thing
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