Current & Recent Work:
Laura is currently the Manager of Public Programs at Heritage Toronto. Previously, she has worked as a lecturer, curator, consultant, and audio producer for numerous organizations, including Bloomberg News, Queen’s University, WNED | WBFO Buffalo, Centennial College. She is also the host and producer of The Feast Podcast. She has produced audio stories for Proof, the podcast by America’s Test Kitchen.
She has also written articles on great moments in food and cocktail history.
You can get in touch with her here or learn more about her academic research and publications here.
Bio
Laura hails from the deserts of Arizona but has recently been found in the relatively colder climates of New York City and Toronto.
Laura first got her taste for history during her undergraduate in sunny San Diego but gave up the sun & surf to study medieval history, first at the University of Toronto and then at the University of Oxford.
While she was completing her master's and doctorate, she found a passion for productive procrastination through cooking for her friends and colleagues. She started a food blog, A Foodie’s Footnotes, in 2009 as a way of tracking her procrastination creations.
After her doctoral work, Laura headed to Canada where she taught history & classics at Queen’s University for five years, winning the W.J. Barnes Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2016 and the History Department’s Teaching Award in 2017.
Her love of history and food finally came together when she started The Feast Podcast in May 2016, an exploration of the great meals that made history.
Since then, she has also developed and led culinary tours and adventures through Toronto and southern Ontario with Heritage Toronto and The Foodies Group. As part of her work in public programming, she was curator of Heritage Toronto’s music history digital exhibit, Sounds Like Toronto, and oversaw the agency’s digital and in-person tour program.
Laura has worked as a podcast producer for Bloomberg News, producing the popular markets podcast “Odd Lots”, Bloomberg Live’s “Out of Office” as well as hosted and produced the weekday COVID-19 roundup, “Prognosis: Coronavirus.”
EDUCATION
Doctor of Philosophy in Medieval History (2012) Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford
Master of Studies in Medieval History (2008) Oriel College, University of Oxford
Master of Arts in Medieval Studies (2007) University of Toronto: Centre for Medieval Studies
Bachelor of Arts with Honors (2006) University of San Diego