Abigail Sargent is a historian who studies the rural populations who grew the food, carted the stone, and paid the taxes that made medieval Europe possible. Her current project investigates the nuts and bolts of administration and organization in Kent and Normandy. She has also done work in environmental history. When not deciphering medieval account books or pondering pre-modern soil depletion, she enjoys exploring the world of Syriac-speaking Christians on the borders of the Eastern Roman Empire and, less metaphorically, any hikeable mountains she can find.