Monica Azzolini MPhil, PhD
Senior Lecturer; European History, 1500-1800
Roles:
- Postgraduate Recruitment Advisor
- Equity and Diversity Officer
- Academic School Representative, CHSS Marketing Forum
- Skill-Training Coordinator, Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies
Room 2.24, William Robertson Wing, Old Medical School, Teviot Place
Telephone: 0131 650 9964Other contacts: None.
Office hours: Currently on leave
Affiliated research centres
Centre for Medieval & Renaissance StudiesBiography
I was born and raised in Milan, Italy. After graduating from the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, I obtained both my MPhil and PhD from the University of Cambridge. I taught for a term at Cambridge before spending a brief period in Sydney, Australia. My early career was marked by a truly hectic peregrinatio academica across the globe! In 2002 I moved to the USA to take up an academic post at the University of Washington, Seattle. In 2004 I crossed the Pacific again to move back to Sydney and take up a lectureship in the School of History at the University of New South Wales. In 2005/6 I spent nine idyllic months at Villa I Tatti, The Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence. It was at I Tatti that I started working actively at my recent book on astrology in Sforza Milan. In the winter of 2006/7 I held a short-term Frances Yates fellowship at the Warburg Institute, London, where I benefitted from access to a unique library and lively intellectual exchange with Warburg staff and fellows.
I finally settled down in the autumn of 2007, when I joined the University of Edinburgh as a lecturer. I have been happily teaching in Edinburgh ever since, with the exception of a period of nine months in Florence in the academic year 2008/2009, sponsored by a Leverhulme Research Fellowship for a new project entitled Celestial Counselling: The Political Uses of Astrology in Early Modern Italy. In 2013 I have been promoted to Senior Lecturer.
Archival research is time-consuming, but extremely rewarding, and, at times, addictive. For this reason, when I am not in Edinburgh I am often in Italy, working in Italian archives and libraries in search of new and exciting documents.
External appointments
- Member of the Editorial Board of Renaissance Quarterly
- Discipline Representative for the History of Medicine and Science, Renaissance Society of America
- Committee Member of the Leonardo da Vinci Society
- International Member of the Editorial board for the series ‘La Nuova Meridiana (Storia)’, Le Lettere
- External examiner, MSc in the History of Medicine, Newcastle University (2008-2011)
Useful Links
My academia.edu page: http://edinburgh.academia.edu/MonicaAzzolini
Professional blog: http://scienceofthestars.wordpress.com
HCA Graduate School on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/uoe.grad.hca