Ashley L. Elrod is an Instructor in History at Duke University. Her research and teaching investigate the history of disability, law, and society in Europe, and western legal culture more broadly, since 1400. Her current research examines the legal history of disability and household economy in the southwestern German lands.
She received her Ph.D. in History from Duke University in 2017. Her dissertation, “Waste Not: Criminalizing Wastefulness in Early Modern Germany,” examines legal and communal attempts to regulate household (mis)management by spendthrifts and people with mental disabilities in early modern southwestern Germany. An article on this topic will appear in the volume Names and Naming in Early Modern Germany, edited by Beth Plummer and Joel Harrington (Berghahn 2018). She received her M.A. from Duke in 2013 and a B.A. in History and German Language & Literature from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2010.
