Dr. Neil Kamil is Associate Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin.  He received his Ph.D. in 1989 from The Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of Fortress of the Soul: Violence, Metaphysics and Material Life in the Huguenots' New World, 1517-1751 (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005). His most recent publications include, "Portable Lives: Reformed Artisans and Refined Materials in the Refugee Atlantic," in Protestant Empires: Globalizing the Reformations, edited by Ulinka Rublack, with Cambridge University Press (2020), and “Mark of Disgrace or Matter of Politeness? Materiality, Trust, and Expectation in Early Eighteenth-Century Virginia," in Crafting Enlightenment: Artisanal Histories and Transnational Networks, edited by Lauren R. Cannady and Jennifer Ferng, in Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment and the Voltaire Foundation in Association with Liverpool University Press (2021). He has been a fellow at the H. F. du Pont Winterthur Museum and a Fulbright Fellow to France.  He was the recipient of a three-year NEH postdoctoral fellowship as well as an NEH long-term fellowship to the American Antiquarian Society and a Charles H. Watts Memorial Fellowship at the John Carter Brown Library.  He was also a two-time recipient of Institute of Historical Studies fellowships at the University of Texas at Austin.  He is currently writing a book about Atlantic refugee artisans and their experiences with working materials from the early modern to the early industrial period.