Exploring the Assumptions of Cultural History is multi-year project organized by The Future of the Past Lab, the Department of Classical & Near Eastern Religions & Cultures, and the Center for Premodern Studies at UMN Twin Cities that will bring a series of visiting fellows to campus. With these fellowships, FoP, CNRC, and CPS hope to foster discussion about the ways in which the study of ancient and premodern cultural history has adopted (often unconsciously) anachronistic categories, premises, and practices and how we can move forward in the study of premodern cultures in a way that better understands the contexts we study. We are very excited to announce our two fellows for the Fall Semester, 2026: Professor Sarah Ifft Decker and Professor Paulo Pacha!
Sarah Ifft Decker is Associate Professor of History at Rhodes College. Her research employs the
lens of intersectionality to reconstruct how the intertwined dynamics of gender, religious
identity, and socioeconomic status shaped people’s lives in the medieval Western Mediterranean.
She is the author of two books, both published in 2022: Jewish Women in the Medieval World,
500-1500 and The Fruit of Her Hands: Jewish and Christian Women’s Work in Medieval
Catalan Cities. From 2018 to 2025, she hosted the podcast Media-eval: A Medieval Pop Culture
Podcast. While at Minnesota, she will be developing a new project that interrogates how
medieval-inspired films and television shows exclude, silence, and stereotype marginalized
populations.
Paulo Pachá is an Assistant Professor of Medieval History at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. He is a historian of Early Medieval Europe, with a primary focus on the structure and dynamics of the Visigothic Kingdom of Toledo. He has published on the history of Visigothic Iberia and regularly engages in public history, exploring the uses and abuses of the medieval past through undergraduate courses and op-eds for outlets such as Folha de S. Paulo and Pacific Standard. His current research interrogates modern appropriations of the past, examining both the weaponization of the European Middle Ages by the far-right and the development of the concept of “technofeudalism.” He holds a PhD
in History from the Universidade Federal Fluminense and has held postdoctoral and visiting fellowships at Universität Hamburg, the Institut für Mittelalterforschung in Vienna, the Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, and Casa de Velázquez in Madrid.
The Future of the Past Lab 
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