Luca Zenobi

Research Fellow, Trinity College
Affiliated Lecturer, Faculty of History
Image
Luca Zenobi
I am a historian of Italy, Europe and the Mediterranean world between 1300 and 1600. Having read history and trained as an archivist in Milan, I moved to Oxford for my PhD and then to Cambridge, where I was a research fellow at Trinity College and an affiliated lecturer at the Faculty of History. In 2023, I will be moving to Edinburgh to begin a three-year fellowship funded by the British Academy.
 

Research

I like to think of my work as a geography of the past. I am interested in how people articulated their presence in the landscape, moved and communicated across distances, and ultimately inscribed their experiences in both texts and objects.

I have written articles and book chapters on the process of community- and territory-formation, the spatial organisation of factions and family militias, and – more recently – the experience of migration, exile and displacement.

I am also the co-editor of two collections of essays: 'Movement and Urban Space in Early Modern Europe' (The Journal of Early Modern History, 2021) and 'Fiction and Disinformation in Early Modern Europe' (Past & Present, 2022).

My first book, 'Borders and the Politics of Space in Late Medieval Italy', will be published by Oxford University Press in 2023.

Teaching

I offer supervision in both paper 14 (European History, 900-1450) and paper 16 (European History, 1450-1760) across several colleges. 

I regularly contribute to the Faculty's programme through lectures and classes in my area, at both undergraduate and graduate level. 

I am always happy to hear from students interested in the history of late medieval and early modern Italy, as well as in themes such as space, mobility, communication and the environment in pre-modern Europe.

Contact

Tags & Themes

Address

Trinity College, CB2 1TQ

Email
lz352@cam.ac.uk
Keywords
Cultural historyDiplomatic historyEarly modern historyIntellectual historyMedia historyMedieval historyMediterranean historyMilitary historyPolitical thoughtSocial historyUrban history
Geographical
Europe

Articles & book chapters

 
[co-authored with E. Claussen] ‘Fiction and Disinformation in Early Modern Europe: An Introduction’, Past & Present, 257/16 (2022), pp. 1-38

Beyond the State: Community and Territory-Making in Late Medieval Italy’, in Imagining a Territory. The Construction and Representation of Territory in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. by M. Damen e K. Overlaet, Amsterdam 2022, pp. 53-80

‘Mobility and Urban Space in Early Modern Europe: An Introduction', The Journal of Early Modern History, 25/1-2 (2021), pp. 1-10

‘Venice's Terraferma Expansion and the Negotiation of Territories in Late Medieval Italy’, Ateneo Veneto, 18/2 (2019), pp. 187-218

‘Itinerari di mobilità geografica e sociale nelle e dalle valli bergamasche a seguito dell’espansione veneziana’, in La mobilità sociale nel Medioevo italiano (vol. II: Stati e istituzioni, secoli XIV-XV), ed. by A. Gamberini, Roma 2017, pp. 377-393

‘Guerra, stato e poteri locali sul medio corso dell’Adda alla metà del Quattrocento. Organizzazione militare e difesa dei confini’, Società e storia, 149/3 (2015), pp. 469-491

'Nascita di un territorio. La vicenda del Monte di Brianza tra Trecento e Quattrocento', Quaderni storici, 144/3 (2013), pp. 813-855

Other publications

 

BIOGRAPHICAL ENTRIES

‘Visconti, Valentina [queen of Cyprus, 1357-1393]’, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (vol. XCVII), Roma 2019, pp. 811-813

‘Visconti, Valentina [duchess of Orléans, 1371-1408]’, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (vol. XCIX), Roma 2020, pp. 626-629

‘Visconti, Lucia [countess of Kent, 1372-1424], in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (vol. XCIX), Roma 2020, pp. 662-665



BOOK REVIEWS

P. Pirillo and L. Tanzini (eds.), Terre di confine tra Toscana, Romagna e Umbria: Dinamiche politiche, assetti amministrativi, società locali (secoli XII-XVI) (Firenze 2020), English Historical Review, 137/4 (2022)

I. Lazzarini, L’ordine delle scritture. Il linguaggio documentario del potere nell’Italia tardomedievale (Roma 2021), Storicamente, 18/2 (2022)

R. Kurelić, Daily Life on the Istrian Frontier: Living on a Borderland in the Sixteenth Century (Turnhout 2019), English Historical Review, 136/4 (2021)

M. Cassioli, Frontiera e transito. La val Nervia tra Liguria e Provenza (Bologna 2018), Nuova Rivista Storica, 105/1 (2021)

M. Ruthven (ed.), Carving up the Globe. An Atlas of Diplomacy (Cambridge, MA 2018), Diplomatica – A Journal of Diplomacy and Society, 3/2 (2020)

M. Cassioli, Frontiera e transito. La val Nervia tra Liguria e Provenza (Bologna 2018), Nuova Rivista Storica, 105/2 (2020)

Occhi (eds.), Carteggi tra basso medioevo ed età moderna. Pratiche di redazione, trasmissione e conservazione (Bologna 2018), ARO – Annali.Reviews.Online, 3/1 (2020)

E.C. Burke, The Greeks of Venice, 1498-1600: Immigration, Settlement, and Integration (Turnhout 2016), Mediterranean Studies, 27/2 (2019)

G. Chittolini, L’Italia delle civitates. Grandi e piccoli centri fra Medioevo e Rinascimento (Roma 2015), The English Historical Review, 132/6 (2017)

L. Tanzini and S. Tognetti (eds.), La mobilità sociale nel medioevo italiano. Competenze, conoscenze e saperi tra professioni e ruoli sociali, sec. XII-XV (Roma 2016), Renaissance Quarterly, 70/3 (2017)

T. Frank and D. Rando (eds.), Ernst Kantorowicz (1895-1963). Political History as Cultural Inquiry (Pavia 2015), Sehepunkte – Rezensionsjournal für die Geschichtswissenschaften, 16/9 (2016)

P. Mainoni (ed.), Lecco viscontea. Gli atti dei notai di Lecco e del suo territorio (Oggiono 2013), Nuova Rivista Storica, 98/1 (2014)