Biography
In the broadest sense, I have always sought to better understand the nature of religion, which has been a pervasive and powerful element in human history. Having been inspired by recent historiography that recognises the importance of bodily experience in Christian worship, I wrote my undergraduate thesis at the University of Warwick on religious and gendered discourses and practices regarding nuns’ bodies in early modern Venice and Florence. Moving from the history of the body in general to the history of food, my MPhil thesis, completed at the University of Cambridge in 2016, found that conceptions of food and ways of using it played an important role in the shifting definitions of Protestantism in the Elizabethan Reformation. My PhD thesis builds on this rich topic, asking similar questions about food and religious change in Reformation Europe, using England and Italy as case studies that allow comparisons to be made between Protestantism(s) and Catholicism(s).
Other academic interests
Material culture
Science and medicine
Gender in religion
Transnational history
Digital history and public engagement - Editor of Doing History in Public