Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies
- Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies
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CREMS Research Associates
Stefan Bauer (stefan.bauer@york.ac.uk) holds an MA and PhD from the University of London (Warburg Institute). He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and of the Royal Historical Society. He was a Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of York from 2017 to 2018. He previously held positions as a Marie Curie Research Fellow at the University of York (2015-2017) and a Research Fellow in Early Modern History at the German Historical Institute, Rome, and the Italian-German Historical Institute, Trent, Italy. In his current research project, he deals with the question of how and why the seeds of religious tolerance came to be sown in an age of confessional polemic. His books include The Censorship and Fortuna of Platina’s Lives of the Popes in the Sixteenth Century (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006) and History and the Counter-Reformation: The Achievement of Onofrio Panvinio (1530–1568) (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
Philip Davey holds an MA in English Language and Literature from the University of Oxford, an MA in English and Creative Writing from the University of New Brunswick, a PGCE from the London Institute of Education, an MA in Film Studies from the University of Exeter and a PGC in Philosophy from the University of Wales. His current project concerns the resonance of Kett's Rebellion (1549) in modern day Norwich.
Elisa Frei (elisa.frei@york.ac.uk) is currently Project assistant for the Digital Indipetae Database, under development by the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies (IAJS), Boston College, MA. Her research interests focus on cultural history broadly and on the histories of emotions, of masculinity and family, of the relations and perceptions between East and West, and of letters (especially litterae indipetae, Jesuit petitions for the Indies). In 2017–2018 she was a post-doctoral research fellow at the IAJS; in 2015 she was a visiting student at the University of York. She holds a BA in Archival Studies, a MA in Italian Philology, a PhD in History and a diploma in Archive-keeping, Paleography and Diplomatics. She is co-editor of the eight-volume series Asia by Daniello Bartoli SJ (1608–1685). Her essays are published in Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, Chronica Mundi, Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits, Orientis Aura and others.
Kaarlo Havu (kaarlo.havu@eui.eu) holds an MA (University of Helsinki) and a PhD (European University Institute, Florence). He has worked as a postdoctoral research fellow and taught courses on the history of political thought at the University of Helsinki. His current research deals with the interactions between rhetoric and politics in the early modern period with a specific focus on visual and imaginative forms of argumentation. Kaarlo joins CREMS as a visiting postdoc for the 2019/20 academic year.
Jaska Kainulainen (jk1493@york.ac.uk) received his PhD from the European University Institute (Florence). He holds the title of docent at the University of Helsinki and is a member of the Helsinki Centre for Intellectual History. He has taught courses on different aspects of early-modern history at the University of Helsinki. His first monograph Paolo Sarpi: A Servant of God and State was published in 2014 by Brill. He is currently completing his second monograph Early Jesuits and the Rhetorical Tradition (forthcoming with Routledge). He is also working on a new project on travel and emotions in the early-modern world. He has published articles in Journal of Jesuit Studies, Journal of Early Modern History, Hispania Sacra and European Review of History.
Lena Liapi (lena.liapi@york.ac.uk) did her first degrees at the University of Athens (BA & MA) and her PhD at the University of York. She has taught at the University of York, the University of Aberdeen, and Leeds Beckett University. Lena now teaches in the History Department at the University of Keele, Staffordshire. Her book Roguery in Print: Crime and Culture in Early Modern London was published in August 2019 by Boydell Press.
Robin Macdonald (robin.macdonald@uwa.edu.au) was awarded her PhD in History at the University of York. She has recently completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions (Europe 1100-1800) at the University of Western Australia. Robin’s work focuses on histories of encounter in seventeenth-century North America, in particular, encounters of people and environments. She is currently completing her monograph, Habits in New France: Bodies, Environments, and Beliefs, 1634–1700. Robin is also co-editor (with Emilie K. M. Murphy and Elizabeth L. Swann) of Sensing the Sacred in Medieval and Early Modern Culture (Routledge).
Jon McGovern (jon.mcgovern@york.ac.uk) received his PhD from the University of York in September 2019. His thesis was about rebellion and propaganda in Tudor England and he has published on a wide range of themes, from allegory, sermons and balladry to political and parliamentary history. Jonathan has won three national essay prizes and his work has appeared in, or has been accepted by, leading journals including Historical Research, Parliamentary History, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Huntington Library Quarterly, Northern History, The Seventeenth Century, Studies in Philology and Notes & Queries. He is presently beginning research for a monograph about sheriffs in Tudor England, while also working on an article about early modern sestinas.
Tom McLeish (tom.mcleish@york.ac.uk) is a Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of York. His research maintains a core of soft-matter and biological physics, especially concerning the role of random processes in protein dynamics, self-assembly of bio-molecular fibres and in evolution itself. He also has broad interdisciplinary research interests concerning science within wider historical and cultural contexts. These include collaborative work on medieval science, the philosophy of strong emergence, the entanglement of science with literature and the theology of science.
Debora Moretti (dm1483@york.ac.uk) holds an MLitt in Ancient History and Archaeology (University of Florence) and a PhD in History (University of Bristol). She has taught courses and seminars in ancient history and medieval and early modern history at the university of Florence and Bristol. Debora’s research interest covers the history of Italian witchcraft in medieval and early modern period; ancient, medieval and modern European paganism and magic and also material evidence of magic in archaeological contexts. Her published research focuses on the interactions between magic, its archaeological evidence and the social perception of the historical practitioners of magic and witchcraft. For over ten years Debora has worked as a professional field archaeologist in Europe, Near East and Africa, specialising in the material evidence of rituals, religions and magical practices in archaeological contexts. Her current research deals with the study of Inquisitorial witchcraft trials to understand the relationship between witchcraft and healing in Medieval and Early Modern Tuscany (Italy). Debora is also working on a on a co-edited volume provisionally entitled: Witchcraft and Counter-witchcraft in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Archaeological and Historical Approaches.
Dustin M. Neighbors (dustin.neighbors@york.ac.uk) was awarded his PhD in History from the University of York in 2018. His doctoral thesis, under the supervision of Dr John Cooper, examined the portable nature of the monarchy, specifically focusing on royal spectacles, female agency, the development of sixteenth and seventeenth-century political culture. Along with teaching for the history department at the University of York, Dustin has maintained a long-standing and close relationship with the Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies. He served as chair of the Cabinet of Curiosities (a CREMS postgraduate forum run by and for all postgraduates) from 2015-2016. He was the first official representative of the CREMS-University of Nebraska-Lincoln Visiting Scholars Partnership in 2016.
Dustin continues his research endeavours as he develops publications and projects. He has served as Postdoctoral Research Assistant with Historic Royal Palaces undertaking research on a pilot project examining the royal progresses of Henry VIII. This research resulted in a successful AHRC Network grant application. Launched in Autumn 2019, the AHRC network project, “Henry VIII on Tour: Tudor Palaces and Royal Progresses”, is a collaboration between Historic Royal Palaces and the History department at the University of York, co-led by Dr John Cooper. Dustin remains affiliated with the project as a consultant and associate. (https://www.hrp.org.uk/about-us/research/henry-viii-on-tour-tudor-palaces-and-royal-progresses/#gs.pxa94i) Currently, Dustin serves as a postdoctoral research fellow with the Centre for Privacy Studies (PRIVACY) at the University of Copenhagen. (https://teol.ku.dk/privacy/about-privacy/) At PRIVACY, Dustin lends his expertise in the history of monarchy and court culture as a member of an interdisciplinary research team that examines notions of privacy within the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Dustin’s publications include an article on the performativity of female power and early modern public participation to be published with Liminalities in Summer 2020. He is co-authoring a chapter for an edited collection on zones of privacy and women’s education in early modern Britain; co-authoring an article on the influence of Electress Anna of Saxony; and developing an article on political privacy within early modern European court culture. He is finishing up his monograph, Huntresses: European Women and the Art of Hunting, 1450-1700, to be published in 2021. The monograph examines women’s use of the traditionally ‘masculine’ activity of hunting from the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries and its use in cultivating agency, identity, and as a means of survival.
John Roe (john.roe@york.ac.uk) (BA (subsequently MA) in English Literature at the University of Cambridge and an MA and PhD in Comparative Literature at Harvard University) is a professor in Renaissance literature. Comparative Literature, mainly English and Italian, has remained a keen interest, which shows principally in his monograph Shakespeare and Machiavelli. He has taught at York since 1973. Before that he taught at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, and at Harvard. During his time at York he has enjoyed long sojourns at universities in other countries, for example, at the University of the Saarland in Germany, at Kyoto University, Doshisha University, and Kobe Jogakuin, in Japan; and most recently a year as the visiting Gillespie Professor at the College of Wooster in Ohio.
Luisa Simonutti (ls2016@york.ac.uk) is senior researcher in philosophy at the Italian National Council for Scientific Research (Institute for the history of philosophy and science in modern age-CNR) in Milan. Her interests cover numerous aspects of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophy and religion. Her focus lying on thinkers such as Spinoza, Locke or Bayle and Hume, and on figures still largely consigned to the fringe of scholarship in spite of their importance in the field of the history of emotions in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. She focuses on the political-theological debate, on translation and philosophy, and on the cultural transfer between Europe and the Mediterranean Basin in modern times. She is the editor of numerous books including, recently, Barbarie in età moderna e contemporanea, (Milan, FrancoAngeli 2018), John Locke: les idées et les choses. Avec le manuscrit inédit Notes upon Mr. John Lock’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding de William Whiston fils, (http://www.editionsmimesis.fr/catalogue/john-locke-les-idees-et-les-choses/ (2019), and Locke and Biblical Hermeneutics - Conscience and Scripture | Luisa Simonutti | Springer (2019).
Neil Tarrant (neil.tarrant@york.ac.uk) is a specialist in the intellectual and cultural history of sixteenth-century Italy, with a particular focus on the history of science and medicine. He studied in the History Department of the University of Edinburgh, the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine at Imperial College London and the Centre for Intellectual History at the University of Sussex. He has subsequently worked in the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine at Imperial College, the History Department at the Royal Holloway University of London, Science, Technology and Innovation Studies at the University of Edinburgh and the History Department at the University of York.
Hannah Thomas (hjht501@york.ac.uk) PhD (Swansea University) is Special Collections Manager and Research Fellow at the Bar Convent, York, the oldest convent in England. Her PhD, which analysed the Welsh Jesuit missionary library of the College of St. Francis Xavier, is being prepared for publication. She is the author of The Secret Cemetery: A Guide to the Burial Ground of the English Canonesses of the Holy Sepulchre (2017) and Jesuit Intellectual and Physical exchange between England and Mainland Europe, co-edited with James Kelly; several articles on Jesuit book history; and a historiographical survey of the Jesuit English Province for Jesuit Historiography Online. Her research interests include Welsh Catholicism in the post-Reformation era; and Catholic uses of libraries.
Emanuela Vai (ev587@york.ac.uk) received her PhD in Art History from the University of St Andrews and the University of Turin. Her research is centred on art history and musicology from the 15th-17th centuries and primarily concentrates on the performative, material and aural dimensions of architectural spaces in Renaissance Italy, including liturgy and the iconography of spaces and their ceremonies. Her research has been funded by the Society for Renaissance Studies, the Society for Italian Studies, the Royal Historical Society, the F&M Caligara Foundation for Interdisciplinary Studies, the Catholic University Centre in Rome and the University of St Andrews. She is currently undertaking an analysis of Salomon de Caus' De Vitruve (c. 1622-1624), a rare and unpublished manuscript commentary on the first book of Jean Martin's French translation of Vitruvius. This is part of her larger project that aims to bridge the art-science divide, focusing on the relationship between music, materiality and architecture in de Caus’ manuscripts, printed books, drawings and theories.
Susan Vincent (susan.vincent@york.ac.uk) was awarded her PhD by York, on the cultural history of dress in Early Modern England, and has now expanded her research interests to include dress practices up to the present day. Currently she is working as the General Editor for a dress series forthcoming from Berg, and as a part of this is authoring a volume on Hair. Her two previous books are Dressing the Elite: Clothes in Early Modern England (2003) and The Anatomy of Fashion: Dressing the Body from the Renaissance to Today (2009).
Michael Walkden (mwalkden@folger.edu) was awarded his PhD in History from the University of York. He is currently a postdoctoral research fellow on the 3-year Mellon-funded research project "Before 'Farm to Table:' Early Modern Foodways and Cultures", based at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. Michael's research focuses on the gut-mind connection in early modern medicine and culture; his doctoral thesis explored seventeenth-century medical theories and practices that assumed a dynamic and multi-directional relationship between digestive and emotional experience. His new project, "Eating the Inedible," explores how sixteenth- and seventeenth-century dietary taboos operated at the intersection of medicine and religion.
Andrea Wenz (andreawenz@oakland.edu) is a historian of early modern Italy and the Protestant Reformation. She received both her MA and PhD from Boston College and is now an Assistant Professor of History at Oakland University, Rochester Hills, MI, USA. Her research interests are situated at the intersection of a number of fields including religious history, migration studies, and history of literacy and the book. She is presently working on a project entitled Ochino's Exile and the Composition of an International Reformation. It explores the ways in which the Italian preacher Bernardino Ochino's experiences in exile--particularly his ability to write and publish prolifically--contributed to the religious developments of the Reformation throughout Europe.
Alex Werner did his first degree (BA in English and Related Literature) at the University of York and a diploma in Museum and Art Gallery Studies at the University of Manchester. A London historian, he is a curator at the Museum of London and has a special interest in material culture, port and maritime history, and print culture. He organised a series of innovative workshops with academics and curators as part of the Centre for Metropolitan History’s Growth of the Skilled Workforce in London 1500-1750 Project. He sat on the London Journal Editorial Committee between 2000-2007. He has curated many exhibitions and gallery displays including ‘London Bodies ‘(1998), the ‘World City galleries’ (2001) and ‘Expanding City gallery’ (2010). He is currently Lead Curator, New Museum, working on the planned move of the museum from London Wall to market buildings at West Smithfield. He sits on the School of Humanities Advisory Board at Royal Holloway and is a governing council member of the London Arts and Humanities Partnership.
Koji Yamamoto (ky751@york.ac.uk) is a historian of early modern England. He spent twelve happy years in the UK, taking master's and doctoral degrees at the Department of History at York, and subsequently held postdoctoral positions at universities in London (King's College London), St Andrews, Edinburgh, and Cambridge. He was a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow between 2012 and 2014. From April 2016, he has been based in Tokyo, Japan, and is currently an Associate Professor in Business History at the Faculty of Economics, the University of Tokyo. His first monograph is Taming Capitalism before its Triumph: Public Service, Distrust and 'Projecting' in Early Modern England (OUP, 2018). With the religious historian Peter Lake (Vanderbilt), Koji is finishing a volume of essays entitled Puritans, Papists and Projectors: Stereotypes and Stereotyping in Early Modern England (Manchester UP). His next book project revisits the South Sea Bubble of 1720 as a culmination of England's culture of projecting.
Nigel Aston is Reader Emeritus in Early Modern History and Honorary Fellow in the School of History, Politics, and International Relations at the University of Leicester where he taught until 2019. He has received numerous funding awards and held many research awards, most recently as a residential Research Fellow at Durham University in 2019-20. Educated at Durham University and Christ Church, Oxford, he has written widely on British and French religious, political, and intellectual history in the ‘long’ eighteenth-century. His most recent publication was Negotiating Toleration: Dissent and the Hanoverian Succession 1714-1760 (OUP, 2019), co-edited with Benjamin Bankhurst. His next book Enlightened Oxford: the University in the cultural and political life of Britain and beyond, 1680-1820 is forthcoming in 2021/22 from Oxford University Press. He has recently commenced work on a new five-year project provisionally entitled Cathedrals in society: cultural, political, and religious interactions in northern England, c1660-1800.