Biography
I completed a BA in History at University College London in 2017, focussing on early modern intellectual and cultural history. My undergraduate dissertation, 'Folly, Social Critique and Philosophy in Sixteenth-Century Italy', explored the sixteenth-century Italian reception of Erasmus of Rotterdam's Praise of Folly, and was awarded the Burns Prize for Highest Mark in a Special Subject Dissertation. I subsequently completed an intercollegiate MA in History of Political Thought and Intellectual History at UCL and Queen Mary, University of London; I received the Quentin Skinner Prize for my performance on the master's course. My MA dissertation examined the significance of the literary trope of the 'Sileni Alcibiadis' in Renaissance thought.
I am broadly interested in the philosophical, political and religious thought of sixteenth-century humanists. My current research project is centred around the debate over the legitimacy of the coercion of heretics in mid-sixteenth-century Switzerland, with a particular focus on arguments against religious coercion, and on the relationship between religion and politics, as developed and disseminated, in the context of this debate, by a number of heterodox Italian Protestant exiles.
Other academic interests:
Erasmus and Northern Humanism, Religious dissent in sixteenth-century Italy, Delio Cantimori and twentieth-century Italian early modern historiography
