Notes on Contributors
Giancarlo Casale is an author and translator specialising in the history of the Ottoman empire and its relations with the larger early modern world. He is currently professor of early modern Mediterranean history at the European University Institute in Florence.
Alessia Castagnino, who has a PhD in European History from the University Ca’ Foscari of Venice (2014), is currently a Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Florence and Principal Investigator of the project ‘NEGOTIATINGNEWS. Negotiating and disseminating medical knowledge in the eighteenth-century Italian periodical press’. Her main research interests concern the intellectual and cultural history of the Enlightenment, the social and cultural history of translation, and the application of digital humanities in historical research. Among her recent publications: ‘Anglo-Italian cultural relations “through the lens of translation.” The first Italian editions of William Robertson’s History of Scotland’ in Ideas across Borders: Translating Visions of Authority and Civil Society in Europe ed. G. Mahlberg, T. Munck (2024); ‘Status and agency of translators in early 19th century Italy: Recent studies and critical insights’, Contemporanea 37, 2024.
Angelo Cattaneo is Principal Investigator for the CNR, Rome and Adjunct Professor at the University of Florence. His research focuses on the history of mapping, travel literature and intercultural encounters, in particular on missionary practices, linguistics and mapping, at the interface of European and Asian empires (1250–1700). He is the P.I. of the PRIN 2022 Research Project ‘Mapping and Translating Spaces, Cultures and Languages. Experiences from the Missions connected to the Portuguese Empire (1540–1700)’. His publications include Fra Mauro’s Mappa mundi and Fifteenth-Century Venice (2011), Tradurre il mondo. Le missioni, il portoghese e nuovi spazi di lingue connesse (2022) and several edited volumes. In 2024 he was appointed Visiting Professor at Yale University.
Tunahan Durmaz is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at the European University Institute, Florence. He studies the social, cultural and political aspects of medical knowledge in the early modern Ottoman world. His dissertation, tentatively titled ‘Mood, Appetite, and Sores: Medicalization of Illness in Ottoman Istanbul, 1640–1691’, explores perceptions of disease and illness in late seventeenth-century Ottoman Istanbul by tracing the medicalisation of mood, appetites and sores in contemporary medical texts.
Stephan Hanß is professor of early modern history at the University of Manchester. His recent books include Narrating the Dragoman’s Self in the Veneto-Ottoman Balkans, c. 1550–1650 (Routledge, 2024).
Giovanni Lista is a Fritz Thyssen Fellow at IZEA, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. He obtained his PhD in intellectual history at the European University Institute and has held postdoc positions at the Lichtenberg-Kolleg (Göttingen) and at the Herzog August Bibliothek (Wolfenbüttel). He has published on seventeenth-century republicanism, natural law and empires. He has contributed extensively to the biographical dictionary of European translators (EUTEC) and has since developed an interest in history of knowledge, cultural history of science and translation studies.
José María Pérez Fernández teaches early modern cultural history, translation studies, and comparative literature at the University of Granada in Spain. He conducts research in these disciplines both at home and abroad, as a visiting fellow at institutions that include the European University Institute, Villa I Tatti in Florence, as well as the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. (
Baki Tezcan is professor of history at the University of California-Davis. He is a specialist of pre-modern Middle Eastern history. His works include The Second Ottoman Empire: Political and Social Transformation in the Early Modern World (Oxford, 2012).
Ann Thomson is emerita professor of intellectual history at the European University Institute. She has published widely on the long eighteenth century in Europe, particularly on the ‘Natural History of Man(kind)’, the circulation of ideas and information, intellectual networks and translation.