Joshua is an ethnohistorian and museum education specialist focusing on the visual and material culture of Indigenous communities from Mexico's early-modern period (~1300-1700). Currently, he is the Jeffrey Rubinoff Junior Research Fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge, researching his first book project on Mesoamerican and Spanish-Colonial learning environments (architecture, artwork, and texts) to understand the dynamic aspects of cultural resilience, place-based learning, and the persistence of local knowledge of Indigenous identity. His other interests include Nahua wildlife science and human-animal relations, the social dynamics of religious indoctrination, and educational videogames and gaming pedagogy about Colonial Latin America.
In 1520, smallpox raged among the Mexica during the month of Tepeilhuitl when they would normally be making and eating sacred art made of dough.