Faculty Member, History
Senior Researcher
About
I received a B.A. (Honors) in Renaissance History at the University of Pisa in 1995. In 1997 I carried out postgraduate study at the University of Florence, taking courses in both Gender Studies and Theory and Method of Historical Research. From 1998 to 2002 I completed a Ph.D. in History at the University of Warwick (UK). During the academic year 2003-2004, I was a Fellow at Villa I Tatti (The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies). From 2005 to 2008 I was a Research Fellow at the Medici Archive Project in Florence. I received a B.A. (Honors) in Renaissance History at the University of Pisa in 1995. In 1997 I carried out postgraduate study at the University of Florence, taking courses in both Gender Studies and Theory and Method of Historical Research. From 1998 to 2002 I completed a Ph.D. in History at the University of Warwick (UK). During the academic year 2003-2004, I was a Fellow at Villa I Tatti (The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies). From 2005 to 2008 I was a Research Fellow at the Medici Archive Project in Florence. After working with various research groups of the University of Pisa, Ohio State University and Ankara University, in 2010 I have returned to the Medici Archive Project as Senior Researcher. During the 2011 Fall Semester I was Research Associate at The Italian Academy at Columbia University in New York.
My research interests focus on the political, social and cultural history of Renaissance and early modern Italy, with an emphasis on military history. In particular, I study the rise of the Florentine military system under the reign of Cosimo I de’ Medici (1519-1574), and the role played by the Italian troops in Spanish service in early modern European conflicts.
I have also been studying military iconography in frescoes, paintings and engravings, as well as the imagery in contemporary epic poetry, as historical sources. I study the relationship between such works and the public for which they were created – a public well-acquainted with military symbolism and culture.
All my publications are based on archival research in Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and Great Britain and I am also interested in the development of new IT tools to make archival manuscript sources more accessible.
