About our staff

@StephenBowd

Dean of Postgraduate Studies, College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences

I graduated with a first-class MA (Hons.) degree in History at the University of Edinburgh in 1993 and proceeded to undertake Ph.D. research on Venetian hermits there, thinking this might be the best training for life as an academic. After completing my doctorate in 1997 I worked at the Manchester Metropolitan University. I re-crossed the border in 2005. Since returning to Edinburgh I have found a very congenial and lively group of Italianists as well as a very supportive environment for my teaching and research on Renaissance Italy. I was promoted to Reader in 2011, and to a personal chair in 2017.

External Examiner, Manchester Metropolitan University, Early Modern History Programmes, 2015, 2017-present

External Examiner, University of St Andrews, Early Modern History Programmes, 2011-2014

External Examiner, Roehampton University, History Programmes, 2002-05

https://edinburgh.academia.edu/StephenBowd

https://research.shca.ed.ac.uk/shadow-agents-of-war/

Women, Weapons and War: http://research.shca.ed.ac.uk/www-workshop/

Renaissance Mass Murder Research Blog: http://research.shca.ed.ac.uk/mass-murder/

Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies: http://www.ed.ac.uk/history-classics-archaeology/centre-medieval-renaissance

Society for Renaissance Studies: http://www.rensoc.org.uk/

MSc in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies: http://www.eca.ed.ac.uk/history-of-art/postgraduate/taught-degrees/renaissance-and-early-modern-studies-msc

LGBT Staff network: https://www.ed.ac.uk/equality-diversity/governance-committees/staff-pride-network

Summary of research interests

• Europe

• Politics
• Religion
• Society

• Early Modern

My research interests have been focused on the history of Venice during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and the history of religious beliefs and practices in Italy. I combined both interests in my first book, which was a surprisingly lengthy account of the brief life of a Venetian patrician-humanist-turned-hermit Vincenzo Querini. In this book I also explored the heated spiritual worlds of Venice, Rome, and Florence during the crucial years of religious change up until c.1540.

In 2000 a chance encounter at a conference in Oxford led me to undertake research in the rich archives of the formerly Venetian subject city of Brescia (now in the region of Lombardy) and I produced an edited collection of texts (translated by Dr J. Donald Cullington) and a monograph, published by Harvard University Press, about aspects of civic religion and culture in the city during the first century of Venetian rule (1426-1530).

I then edited a selection of humanist texts about the infamous alleged torture and murder of the child Simon of Trent by the Jews of Trent in 1475, which was published in the Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies series in 2012. These texts were written by a number of Brescian humanists but the works had Italian, and indeed European, resonance since they confirmed in the new medium of print Christian fears about the dangers of Jews present in Christian society.

Finally, my interest in belief has encouraged my work on prophecy, millenarianism, the supernatural, and ‘superstition’ in Renaissance Italy. I have focused attention on the social, religious, and political roots of the ‘occult’ and outlined how it formed an essential and contested part of everyday beliefs and practices. I have extended my interest in this field, which has also formed an important strand of my teaching, to sixteenth-century England with three articles exploring the life and work of John Dee, who was warden of Manchester College and considered the 'arch-conjuror of England', as the title of his most recent biography puts it.

As well as the projects listed below I have written an essay on mass murder in the sacks of cities in Italy during the Italian Wars (1494-1559) for a collection of essays, Murder in Renaissance Italy edited by Trevor Dean and Kate Lowe (Cambridge University Press, 2017). This reflects a new direction in my work towards the social history of warfare, and specifically the mass murder of non-combatants during the Italian Wars for which I was awarded a Leverhulme Research Fellowship (2016-17). I have blogged about my research at: http://research.shca.ed.ac.uk/mass-murder/ My monograph on this topic appeared with Oxford University Press in November 2018: https://global.oup.com/academic/search?q=Bowd&cc=gb&lang=en

Gender and early modern war is a research theme which emerged from my Leverhulme-funded work. I am now working on a study of 245 letters written by a noblewoman who took part in the attack on Brescia in 1512 and together with my colleague Dr Sarah Cockram I co-organised a workshop in Edinburgh on 'Women, Weapons, and War', which addressed gender and war during the ancient, medieval, and early modern periods: http://research.shca.ed.ac.uk/www-workshop/

Thanks to a University of Sydney Partnership Collaboration award Dr Cockram and I organised with Dr John Gagné (Sydney) two workshops (in Edinburgh and Sydney) on 'Shadow Agents of War', which considered overlooked fighters and foragers (especially women and children); key organizers (heralds, land surveyors, bureaucrats); service workers (sappers, surgeons, armourers, merchants, arms dealers); and traditionally marginalised groups (bandits, refugess, and animals). See: https://research.shca.ed.ac.uk/shadow-agents-of-war/

Finally, I have also maintained my interest in sixteenth-century religious history and have completed a contribution to the Brill Companion to Vittoria Colonna edited by Abigail Brundin, Tatiana Crivelli, and Maria Serena Sapegno, which appeared in 2016.

During 2011-12 I was on leave and undertaking research funded by the British Academy on humanist writing about Jews and Judaism in Renaissance Italy. My archival research was distilled into a database of humanist authors and works about Jews which has been made publicly accessible in searchable form at http://datashare.is.ed.ac.uk/handle/10283/2070. I have also published articles based on this work in a special issue of Archivio italiano per la storia della pietà on Jews and Chritians edited by Gabriella Zarri, and for a more general readership in the magazine History Today. A further article on Venetian patrician humanists and Jews appeared in Renaissance Quarterly in 2016.

I have also been involved with the project 'Between Apes and Angels: Human and Animal in the Early Modern World' - a collaborative project looking at animal/human relationships before Darwin (with colleagues across the University of Edinburgh, including Veterinary studies and Sculpture at ECA). This led to a Wellcome-funded conference in December 2014: https://apesandangels.wordpress.com/between-apes-and-angels-animal-and-human-in-the-pre-modern-world/. With Dr Sarah Cockram I have edited a special edition of Renaissance Studies on 'The Animal in Renaissance Italy' which appeared in April 2017.

• Year 1 -  Course Organiser, Lecturer and Tutor, Early Modern History: A Connected World
• Years 3/4 - Course Organiser and Tutor, Renaissance Italians, c.1300-c.1600; Catholic Christendom, c.1450-c.1650; Machiavelli and His World; History in Theory; History in Practice; Year Abroad Essay Supervisor
• Year 4 - Course Organiser and Tutor, Venice, c. 1400- c. 1700; Dissertation Supervisor

With the Venice 4MA Undergraduate Class in Venice in 2011

• MSc Option: The Global Renaissance
• MSc Option: Medieval and Renaissance Italy: Objects, Texts and Practices
• MSc in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies

Early modern society and war

Renaissance Italy

Venice