Professor Kate Lowe
Professor of Renaissance History and Culture
Location: Arts Two 2.03email: k.j.p.lowe@qmul.ac.uk
Phone: ++44 (0) 20 7882 5724
Kate Lowe obtained a BA in History from Bedford College, University of London in 1977 and a PhD in Combined Historical Studies from the Warburg Institute, University of London in 1985.
She has held lectureships at the universities of Hong Kong, London, Cambridge and Birmingham. In addition, she has held year-long fellowships at Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence, Italy (1996-97), The National Humanities Center, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, USA (2000-01), and the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, Helsinki, Finland (2006-07).
She has also been Dorothy Ford Wiley Distinguished Visiting Professor of Renaissance Culture at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA (January-July 2004), and Lila Wallace/Reader’s Digest Visiting Professor at Villa I Tatti (Spring 2010).
She is co-convenor (with Trevor Dean and Serena Ferente) of the research seminar on late medieval and early modern Italian history at the Institute of Historical Research in London, and was a member of the Academic Advisory Committee of Villa I Tatti from 2007-2012.
Research interests:
Professor Lowe’s research is centred on Renaissance and Early Modern Italy, but she is also interested in Renaissance Portugal. Her current project concerns sub-Saharan Africans in Southern Europe between 1440 and 1650. Much of her previous research has been interdisciplinary in nature, and she is especially interested in history with a visual or material culture component.
She is concurrently working on a project on the early life of the distinguished historian of Renaissance Florence, Nicolai Rubinstein (1911-2002), entitled ‘The intellectual and cultural formation of a refugee scholar: Nicolai Rubinstein between Germany, Italy and Britain, 1920s-1950s’.
Postgraduate supervision:
PhDs currently being supervised:
- Italian material culture at the Tudor court, 1485-1649 (a Collaborative Doctoral Award with The Royal Collection)
- The Italian Renaissance stable
Professor Lowe would be very happy to supervise PhD students in any area of Renaissance or Early Modern Italian history (1400-1650), especially cultural, ecclesiastical or social history, or history with a visual or material culture component, or gender history, and would happily co-supervise a topic on Portuguese fifteenth or sixteenth-century history. She would be particularly interested in supervising students in the broad area of sub-Saharan Africans in Renaissance Europe.
Publications:
Church and Politics in Renaissance Italy: The Life and Career of Cardinal Francesco Soderini, 1453-1524 (Cambridge University Press, 1993)
(Edited with Trevor Dean)Crime, Society and the Law in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge University Press, 1995)
(Edited with Trevor Dean) Marriage in Italy, 1300-1650 (Cambridge University Press, 1998)
(Edited) Cultural Links between Portugal and Italy in the Renaissance (Oxford University Press, 2000)
Nuns’ Chronicles and Convent Culture in Renaissance and Counter-Reformation Italy (Cambridge University Press, 2003)
(Edited with TF Earle) Black Africans in Renaissance Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2005)
Guest editor of a special issue of Renaissance and Reformation/Renaissance et réforme, 31: 2 (2008) on ‘Sub-Saharan Africa and Renaissance and Reformation Europe: New findings and new perspectives’
Undergraduate teaching:
Old Worlds, New Worlds: Europe, 1400-1600 (Level 4)
Africa in Europe, 1440-1650 (Level 5)
The World of the Nun: Convent Culture in the Renaissance 1: Italy (Level 5)
Renaissance Rome, c 1430-1530 (Level 6)