Notes on Contributors
Lorenzo Allori
holds a Master’s Degree in Cybersecurity at the University of Pisa and graduated in Media Studies and Business Communication at the University of Siena. As a postdoctoral research fellow on the EURONEWS project based in UCC, he was responsible for: data entry supervision, data modelling, and data transformation. He is the project manager for the MIA (Medici Interactive Archive) digital portal (https://mia.medici.org), which is used by the EURONEWS project to perform the data-entry process. He has worked also for Syracuse University and for several other firms, building ad hoc IT solutions. He has been a member of the The Medici Archive Project team since 2003, creating the entire MAP information technology infrastructure. He has been the project manager for MAP’s digital platform BIA (http://bia.medici.org). He is also in charge of the Mediceo del Principato Digitization Project. His interests include Digital Humanities, Digital History, Data Curation, and developing opensource software using the latest web technologies.
Leanne Blaney
is currently based in Glasgow, where her research focuses on the historical interrelationship between the media, migrants and modernity. Her particular interests relate to the impact and influence of technology and transport on wider British and Irish society. Alongside her monograph The Motorcar in Ireland: 1896–1939 (Liffey Press, 2019) she is the author and co-author of Easter Rising 1916 (Willow Press, 2016) and UCD Collegians (UCD Press, 2017).
Davide Boerio
obtained a dual Ph.D. in early modern history from the University of Teramo and University College Cork with a thesis titled ‘News, Network and Discourses during the Neapolitan revolution of 1647–48 and its Aftermath’. His research focuses on the production, circulation, reception and control of political information in the early modern period. He has participated in several conferences on this subject in England, Ireland, Italy, Germany, Spain, and his research has appeared in leading international publications. In 2013, he was a Samuel Freeman Charitable Trust Fellow at the Medici Archive Project. Since 2014 he has been a research fellow at the MAP, working on the Birth of News program, and also instructor for the palaeography course. He has held several post-doctoral research fellowships related to history of communication for both Italian and European research agencies. In 2018 he was Instructor of Early Modern History at Temple University Campus in Rome. In January 2019 he joined the EUORNEWS project on the history of early modern news, sponsored by the Irish Research Council, where he is a post-doctoral research fellowship and research coordinator.
Daniel Carey
is the research project officer for community engagement on the CUPHAT (Coastal Uplands Heritage and Tourism) project and is based in the School of Geography at University College Dublin. A graduate of National University of Ireland, Galway, he completed his BA (International) in History, Sociology and Political Science in 2003, and his MA in Journalism in 2004. He worked full-time in journalism for thirteen years, most of them as a reporter with The Mayo News in Westport. His PhD, undertaken at the School of Communications in Dublin City University, took the form of an oral history project on the working lives of former journalists and editors in Ireland, in which he conducted in-depth, face-to-face interviews with thirty participants.
Jane L. Chapman
is Professor of Communication at Lincoln University, and a former Research Associate at Wolfson College Cambridge. Author of thirteen books, plus over thirty articles/book chapters, she is an editorial board member for the journal Media History. Previous awards include the Colby Prize for Victorian Literature (shared), and Emerald Publishing best academic article of the year. Jane specialises in content produced by neglected and disenfranchised voices in the comparative history of newspapers and cartoons. She has researched and published extensively on the theme of newspaper communications by women and ethnic minorities in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her collaborative research on Comics and the World Wars was funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council, who also funded her four grants for the Centenary of World War One. Her monograph (Palgrave 2024) analyses secrecy, deception, and the growth of journalistic participation transnationally during the Second World War.
Ondřej Daniel
earned his PhD from Charles University’s Faculty of Arts, with a dissertation published as Bigbít nebo turbofolk: představy migrant z bývalé Jugoslávie (Rock or Turbofolk: The Imagination of Migrants from the Former Yugoslavia, 2013). He is a co-founder of the Prague-based Centre for the Study of Popular Culture (cspk.eu) and works as an historian in the Seminar on General and Comparative History within the Department of World History at Charles University’s Faculty of Arts. Since 2016, he has published a series of works that have synthesised his research on the role of subcultures and violence in the development of post-socialist mainstream Czech culture and DIY subcultural practices. His current work covers different aspects of reception of popular and alternative music. His recent book Ušima střední třídy: mládež, hudba a třída v českém postsocialismu (Through the Ears of the Middle Class: Music, Youth and Class in the Czech Postsocialism, 2023) examines intersections of different social categories and music in contemporary Czech history.
Eamon Darcy
is editor of Archivium Hibernicum and an historian of early modern Britain and Ireland based at Maynooth University. Author of The Irish Rebellion of 1641 and the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (Boydell and Brewer, Woodbridge, 2013), he has published extensively on print culture and popular politics. He is also co-investigator of Ancient Woodlands Ireland, a €1.2 million project funded by the Irish Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine, which aims to identify and map ancient Irish woodlands.
Brendan Dooley
(PhD University of Chicago 1986), is currently Professor of Renaissance studies at University College Cork, having previously taught at Harvard, Notre Dame and Jacobs University Bremen. He works on the histories of culture and knowledge with reference to Europe and especially to Italy and the Mediterranean world. Publications include Angelica’s Book and the World of Reading in Late Renaissance Italy (Bloomsbury, 2016) and A Mattress Maker’s Daughter, the Renaissance Romance of Don Giovanni de’ Medici and Livia Vernazza (Harvard, 2014), and, as editor (with Paola Molino), Years of News: What the Early Moderns Knew About their World (Brepols, in press).
Panagiotis Georgakakis
holds a doctorate degree in Early Modern European History from the University of St Andrews. In his thesis, he explored the development and the dissemination of the Huguenot newspapers in the Dutch Republic, 1670–1701. He is a graduate of the Department of History and Archaeology of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, where he also earned his master’s degree in European History. He has published two journal articles to date on early-modern news, and has participated in numerous conferences. He was one of the three delegates elected by the University of Athens to participate in the UNHCR European conference ‘Refugees, Migrants, undesirables’ held in Perpignan in 2016.
Joel Herman
is a PhD Candidate in the School of Histories and Humanities at Trinity College Dublin. His thesis, ‘Revolutionary Currents: The Imperial Public Sphere and the Destabilization of Empire, c.1760–1784’, investigates the emergence of certain features of an imperial public sphere in the period of the imperial crisis, and describes how these features contributed to the destabilization of the British empire and revolutionary reactions in the American colonies and Ireland. He has previously published on the subject of patriotism in Ireland and early America and has other work forthcoming on the news, and newspapers, which flowed between Ireland, the American colonies, and Britain in the late eighteenth-century. He has been awarded visiting fellowships to carry out his research including most recently being named a 2022–2023 David Center for the American Revolution International Fellow at the American Philosophical Society.
Bláithín Hurley
has a PhD in the History of Art from the University of Cambridge (2016), an MA in the History of Art from the University of Warwick (2009) and a BA in the History of Art and Music from University College Cork (2008). She is currently studying for an MA in Library Information Services at the University of Aberystwyth. Bláithín is a Staff Officer and Local Studies Librarian at Waterford Library Services, Waterford, Ireland. She is also an Associate Lecturer with the Open University’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Bláithín has previously published articles on the art and music of the Italian Renaissance and on Public Libraries in Ireland. At present her research centres around the art and architecture of the Church of Ireland Cathedrals in Waterford City and Lismore, Co. Waterford, Ireland.
Johana Kłusek
is a PhD candidate in Modern History at the Department of European Studies at Charles University in Prague. Her dissertation follows her previous research in the field of history of mentalities, for which she was awarded the Edvard Beneš Prize for Best Thesis in Modern History in 2017. The doctoral thesis deals with the Image of Britain in Czechoslovak Media Discourses between 1939 and 1948. In 2019 she participated in the Humboldt University’s project ‘London Moment’ as a SYLFF fellow. In 2020 she was awarded a SYLFF Research Abroad Award for research in London. She studied Political Science at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York, and conducted an internship at the University of Oxford. Currently she is a Visiting Scholar at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, where she teaches the history of Europe from below.
Wouter Kreuze
completed his PhD at University College Cork while working for the EURONEWS project. His research involves the development of new digital methodologies for the study of manuscript newsletters, including building avvisi databases which draw from several European collections and then deploying tools to interrogate this information to uncover patterns in early modern news. Before starting his doctorate, he received BA degrees in History and Italian as well as an MA in History from the University of Leiden.
Lena Liapi
is an Honorary Research Fellow at Keele University, UK. Her research revolves around cultures of communication, crime and urban history. Her monograph Roguery in Print: Crime and Culture in Early Modern London examined a wide range of cheap print in order to analyse the multivalence of the figure of the rogue. She is currently working on a new project, ‘Famous: News, Reputation and Public Opinion (1600–1720)’. This explores the ways in which fame was produced and circulated through words, texts, and images, and the ability of individuals to manage their reputation.
Jakub Machek
is a social historian. He lectures in the Media Studies Department, Metropolitan University Prague. He is the author of the monograph Počátky populární kultury v českých zemích, The Emergence of Popular Culture in the Czech Lands (2017) and has co-edited several collections of essays. His research covers the development of Czech popular culture, media, and society in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. His latest research is focused on the function of music in Czech society, from brass band music to disco. He is a founding member of the Centre for the Study of Popular Culture in Prague.
Sara Mansutti
holds a master’s degree in Italian Philology and Literature from the University of Udine and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Digital Humanities at University College Cork. Her doctoral research started within the EURONEWS project, funded by the Irish Research Council and led by Professor Brendan Dooley, and focuses on the correspondence between Cosimo Bartoli, a Florentine agent in Venice, and the Medici family during the years 1562 to 1572. Specifically, she explores Bartoli’s methods of acquiring information in Venice, reconstructs his network and examines how the information in his letters relates to the information in the handwritten newsletters. With a keen interest in Digital Humanities, her research interests extend to automatic text recognition, participatory editing, and digital editions, to explore new workflows to broaden accessibility to historical primary sources.
Liam Mac Mathúna
is Professor Emeritus of Irish at University College Dublin. He has published widely in Ireland and abroad on the lexicon, literature, and culture of Irish. He is editor of Éigse: A Journal of Irish Studies, published by the National University of Ireland. His recent publications include Douglas Hyde: My American Journey (co-edited, 2019), The Ó Neachtain Window on Gaelic Dublin, 1700–1750 (2021) and Douglas Hyde: Irish Ideology and International Impact (co-edited with Máire Nic an Bhaird, 2023). He is collaborating with Dr Nic an Bhaird on research into the life and work of Douglas Hyde, with the first volume due in 2024.
Aodhán ( formerly Maria-Valeria) Morris
was born in Chelyabinsk, Russia. After finishing his Cand.Sci. in Legal History in HSE (Moscow), he turned to Folklore Studies and wrote a master’s thesis on early modern portrayals of Tuatha Dé Danann in the writings of Keating and Ó Cléirigh. Developing an interest in social anthropology, he then ventured into Troubles Studies, almost reaching the point of defending a further Cand.Sci. thesis on contemporary Irish rebel urban folklore. However, coming from a Ukrainian Jewish family and being pro-Ukraine and openly queer, he was forced to flee to Israel for fear of political repercussions after Russia invaded Ukraine. From there, he was awarded the 2023 Hardiman Scholarship at the University of Galway where he will now continue his research.
Luca Marangolo
is an Adjunct professor of Comparative Literature and History of literary criticism at the University of Naples, “Federico II”. He received his doctorate in Comparative Literature at the university of Rome “Roma Tre” in 2016. He has lectured in a number of universities in Italy and Europe, and has served as a consultant on the project “Tales of Two cities” at the University of Naples. He is currently writing a book on tragedy in the Ancien Régime (1582–1744). He has written extensively on the relationship between literature and other media.
Máire Nic an Bhaird
is a lecturer in Irish Language and Literature and History of Education in Maynooth University, Ireland. Her main area of research is the life and work of Douglas Hyde, Ireland’s first President. She is currently writing a book about the life and work of Douglas Hyde with An tOllamh Liam Mac Mathúna. She has several publications relating to her research and has also presented her research interests on national and international television and radio programmes.
Pasquale Palmieri
is an associate professor of Early Modern History at the University of Naples Federico II. He holds a Ph.D. in the History of European Society (Naples, 2008) and Italian Studies (University of Texas at Austin, 2021). His research interests include early modern media and literary culture, with a particular emphasis on the relationship between politics and religion. He also works on the eighteenth-century Italian novel, print culture and book history. He directs the interdisciplinary project ‘Tales of Four Cities. News/Legends between Print and Archive (Naples, Rome, Florence, Venice, 1571–1789)’, and is now co-director of the NEH International Collaboration Grant ‘Rethinking Eighteenth-Century Italian Culture and Its Transnational Connections”. His recent publications include: L’eroe criminale. Giustizia, politica e comunicazione nel XVIII secolo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2022) and Le cento vite di Cagliostro (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2023).
Carlotta Paltrinieri
received her doctoral degree in Italian Studies at Indiana University Bloomington in August 2018, with a specialization in early modern literature and art history. Her doctoral dissertation examined the changing status of visual arts between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, through the linguistic and stylistic analysis of the contemporary artistic literature. She has worked on the social and intellectual exchanges within the Accademia del Disegno of Florence, joining the research group Tuscan Academies of the 17th century, coordinated by the Centro Internazionale di Studi sul Seicento at the Università di Siena. Her recent publications include: ‘Cosimo I, l’Accademia del Disegno, e ‘il beneficio pubblico’ (Pontecorboli, 2019); ‘Alla riscoperta della sociabilité dell’Accademia del Disegno di Firenze: i Luogotenenti’, (2020); and ‘The celebrations of the canonization of Saint Andrea Corsini in San Giovanni dei Fiorentini: a Florentine saint in Rome’ (forthcoming). As a post-doctoral researcher within the EURONEWS Project, Carlotta worked on the development of the language of the avvisi as a lingua franca.
Thom Pritchard
is a PhD researcher at The University of Edinburgh. His PhD project entitled ‘The Bellicose Days: News, Memory and the Culture of the Stuart Intervention into the Thirty Years War 1624–1630’, is a cultural history based upon the movement of people, soldiers, refugees and diplomats and information, news and ideas, between the Stuart kingdoms and a war-torn Continent. At Edinburgh, Thom founded the interdisciplinary and award-winning Edinburgh Early Modern Network which has organised many events for an international audience such as the four-day Enemies in the Early Modern World conference in March 2021. Thom was a visiting researcher at the University of Leiden and at the European University Institute in Florence and prior to the PhD completed a MA at the Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies at the University of York. Thom has also been published by the Journal for the Northern Renaissance on the Valtellina Crisis.
Alessandro Tuccillo
is an Associate Professor in Early Modern History at the Department of Cultures, Politics and Society of the University of Turin. He has worked primarily on the intellectual and political history of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, especially on the debates about colonial slavery. As member of the DisComPoSE project (Disasters, Communication and Politics in Southwestern Europe: The Making of Emergency Response Policies in the Early Modern Age, ERC StG 2017, University of Naples Federico II), he deals with the ecclesiastical information networks and devotional practices in case of disasters caused by natural events (Hispanic Monarchy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries). He is the author of two monographs, Il commercio infame. Antischiavismo e diritti dell’uomo nel Settecento italiano (Naples 2013) and Umanità contesa. L’apologetica di Giambatista Roberti contro il « filosofismo » (Roma 2020), has edited two unpublished diplomatic briefs by patriot Matteo Galdi (1765–1821) (Naples 2008), and has published several essays in collective volumes and in international journals.
Milena Viceconte
obtained a PhD in History of Art in 2013, a joint degree between the University of Naples Federico II and the University de Barcelona. She took part in several research groups within the University of Barcelona, focused on artistic circulation between Italy and Spain in the early modern period. From 2018 she has been a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Naples Federico II in the framework of the ERC research project DisComPoSE (Disasters, Communication and Politics in Southwestern Europe), within which she deals with issues related to the imageries of disasters in the territories of the Spanish Monarchy through the analysis of figurative sources (16th–18th centuries). Among her recent publications, she edited together with Gennaro Schiano and Domenico Cecere the volume Heroes in Dark Times. Saints and Officials Tackling Disaster (Viella, 2023).
Brian Wallace
is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the John Rylands Research Institute and Library, University of Manchester, working on technology and magic in nineteenth-century imperial encounters. His general research focus is the cultural history of imperialism and its legacies, and his previous project explored the impact of Victorian colonial sieges on British culture and national identity. His work has been published in the Historical Journal, History Workshop Journal, and History Today.
Alexander S. Wilkinson
is a Professor of Early Modern History at University College Dublin. Sandy was educated at the University of St Andrews and was employed there thereafter as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow from 2001–2006, serving as Project Manager of the St Andrews French Book Project. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and the author of several studies of the early modern European book world, including: Mary Queen of Scots in French Public Opinion (Palgrave, 2004), French Vernacular Books, co-edited with Andrew Pettegree and Malcolm Walsby (Brill, 2007), Iberian Books, edited with Alejandra Ulla Lorenzo and Alba de la Cruz (Brill, 2010, and 2018), as well as articles in journals such as French History, The Library, Quaerendo and Renaissance Studies. He is currently working on a project deploying AI and image recognition to explore the ornamentation and illustration used in the book world of fifteenth and sixteenth century Europe.
Chris Williams
has been Head of the College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences and a professor in the School of History at University College Cork since 2017. Educated at Balliol College, Oxford, and the University of Wales, his previous positions include Professor of Welsh History at Swansea University and Head of the School of History, Archaeology and Religion at Cardiff University. He edited the Richard Burton Diaries (Yale University Press, 2012). His work on political cartoons has been published in War in History, Media History and the Journal of Religious History, and in edited volumes including Brake et al., The News of the World: Journalism for the Rich, Journalism for the Poor (2016). He maintains three websites that hold digitised versions of over 5000 cartoons by the Welsh cartoonist J. M. Staniforth: Cartooning the First World War (cartoonww1.org), Cartooning the Road to War (roadtowarcartoons.org), and Cartooning the Post-War World (postwarworldcartoons.org).