Sarina Kuersteiner

Sarina Kuersteiner is an Assistant Professor of History at Union College, specializing in medieval Mediterranean economic, legal, and cultural history. Her research examines cross-cultural commercial practices, notarial culture, and the intersection of legal and cultural systems in medieval Europe. She holds a PhD from Columbia University (2021) and has published widely on topics such as Arabic-Latin commercial terminology and medieval notaries’ roles in shaping archival practices.

Dr. Kuersteiner teaches courses on medieval history, science, and the digital analysis of premodern societies. She co-founded the award-winning Medievalist Toolkit, a public history initiative addressing contemporary misuses of the premodern past. Her current book project, Minds and Margins: Notarial Culture in Bologna, ca. 1250–1350, explores how notaries conceptualized their roles through marginalia in legal documents. She is also developing a second book analyzing cross-cultural commercial exchanges in the medieval Mediterranean.