My research focuses on the intellectual history of early modern Italy. My dissertation project focuses on the relationship between 16th century Italian universities and learned academies. It explores the academies' engagement in philosophical discussion and debate and the extent to which this complemented, supplemented and/or diverged from university teaching in the period. It therefore deals with questions of the relationship between Latin and vernacular scholarship, between philosophy and literature - which was also a prominent focus of study for the academies - and of the effects of Catholic censorship on the development of Italian philosophical thought.
Before Penn, I earned a B.A. in History and M.A. in Culture of the European Renaissance from the University of Warwick’s Renaissance Centre. Having achieved a Best Overall Performance prize in my History BA (2016-17), I published my undergraduate thesis in Comitatus. I was then awarded the Martin Lowry Prize for Highest Overall Achievement for my M.A. work.
I currently act as Graduate Fellow for Global Medieval and Renaissance Studies and Assistant Editor for Bibliotheca Dantesca, an international peer-reviewed journal dedicated to Dante studies.
Advisor: Professor Ann Moyer
M.A. Culture of the European Renaissance, University of Warwick Centre for the Study of the Renaissance (2018)
B.A.(Hons) History, University of Warwick (2017)
Philosophy; intellectual history; Reformation history; Renaissance Italy; early modern literature; vernacular; print; book history
HIST 143: Foundations of European Thought
HIST 001: Making the Modern World
HIST 001: History of Policing
‘Platonic Love and Aristotelian Ethics in Alessandro Piccolomini’s Institutione (1542)’ in Harmony and Contrast: Plato and Aristotle in the Early Modern Period, ed. Anna Corrias and Eva Del Soldato (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022).
[Book review] "'Building the Canon Through the Classics: Imitation and Variation in Renaissance Italy (1350-1580).' Eloisa Morra, ed. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2019.," Bibliotheca Dantesca: Journal of Dante Studies: Vol. 4 , Article 22.
‘Femmina masculo e masculo femmina: Androgynous Beauty and Ambiguous Sexualities in the Italian Renaissance’, Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 49 (2018), pp. 103-35.
Renaissance Society of America