During her time at Wake Forest, Laura was awarded a Richter summer research grant that enabled her to excavate on an Iron Age necropolis in Italy and visit museums and archaeological sites in Tuscany in support of her Honors thesis research. This experience truly fanned the flames of her passion for history despite her intentions to study science. After graduating, she moved to London for an internship at the British Museum, where she became more familiar with the field of archaeological materials science. She earned her Masters and PhD at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, in this field, specializing in the chemical analysis of historic and archaeological glass. Her research there was on medieval stained glass windows. She then went on to work as a postdoctoral researcher in Orl\u00e9ans, France at CNRS, working primarily on early Islamic mosaics. Since returning to the US, Laura has worked in quality control testing within the glass manufacturing industry and in technical and medical editing, while staying involved in historical research on the side. She lives in a 17th century log cabin outside Philadelphia with her partner, two young children, two cats, and a turtle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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