Prof Filippo de Vivo

Overview

Office hours

Tuesday and Thursday 4.30-5.30pm

Qualifications

• DEA (MPhil), EHESS, Paris, 1998
• PhD, Cambridge, 2003
• BA (Hons) History, Cambridge, 1997

Professional memberships

• FRHistS

  
  

Research

Research overview

My research focuses on early modern Italy and the Republic of Venice to explore the connections between communication and politics widely conceived – so widely, indeed, that it seeks to rethink the very concept of who acted politically, how and why. So for example I have worked on the uses of rhetoric and the circulation of manuscripts, on news-leaking, book-printing and record-making, on the physical spaces for the exchange of ideas and information (like early modern pharmacies), the international circulation of ideas (as with a 17th-c. correspondence between Venice and England), and on the construction of late-medieval and early modern archives and other repositories of information. I have a strong interest for questions of historiography and methodology, and particularly for the uses of microhistory and for the connections between political, social and cultural history.

Communication, information, and politics

Today we take it for granted that power and the media influence each other. But what was the use of communication in an age when rulers recognized no political role for their subjects? And what access to political information did those excluded from government have? In answering these questions, I studied the interactions of different forms of communication – oral, manuscript, and printed – in early modern Venice: from pamphlets to graffiti and rumours (captured, as far as possible, from spies' reports: a fascinating source). In the process, I have been trying to challenge the traditional boundaries of political history, to demonstrate that, in the early modern city, politics extended beyond the patrician elite to involve the entire population, from humble clerks and foreign spies, to notaries, artisans, barbers, and prostitutes. This brought to my first book, Information and Communication in Venice: Rethinking Early Modern Politics (2007). More recently, I have been working on the interaction between long-distance information and local agency, see my article here.

History and archives

In 2012-16 I conducted a large-scale collaborative investigation on the comparative history of archives in late medieval and early modern Italy (for more, see http://www.bbk.ac.uk/history/archives). We studied the establishment, management and use of archives from the 13th century – when those chancery offices first began preserving records systematically – to the end of the 18th – when Italy’s old states were toppled by wars and revolutions at the end of the ancien régime. The project compared chanceries and secretariats in seven case studies (Milan, Venice, Modena, Florence, Rome, Naples and Palermo) with other Italian and non-Italian cases. A variety of aspects were studied around six themes: 1) Politics; 2) Organisation; 3) Material culture; 4) Social history; 5) Uses of archives; 6) Archives and historians. We organised a succession of nine international workshops and conferences. Collectively we published a book, a further collection of sources, and 2 special issues of peer-reviewed journals. Team members published a total of 23 book chapters or articles - and are still publishing more!

Venice and England

I am currently working on reason of state, religion and information at a European level while preparing a critical edition of Thomas Hobbes’ translation of the letters by Fulgenzio Micanzio (1570-1654), Venetian friar and government advisor to the Venetian Republic, to Hobbes’ patron William Cavendish, second Earl of Devonshire. This - much delayed! - project will appear in a volume, co-edited with Noel Malcolm (Oxford), of the Clarendon edition of the works of Hobbes.

Supervision and teaching

Supervision

Supervisions within Birkbeck:

4

I welcome research proposals concerning the social, political and cultural history of early modern Italy and of the territories of the Republic of Venice; the history of the book, print, manuscript and oral culture, mainly of Italy but also of France and the Iberian peninsula; the history of late-medieval and early modern archives and chanceries or secretary offices.

I have supervised and co-supervised PhD students working on the inquisition in medieval Italy, medicine and botany in sixteenth-century Florence, archival practices and historiography in early modern Venice, the chancery culture of sixteenth-century Milan, archival practices in the medieval Middle East, the history of the book as a material object, travel in 16-17th century Europe, antiquarianism, art and patrician identity in Renaissance Venice.

Current doctoral researchers

• ALICE CORREIA MORTON

  Nature of supervision:

  Joint Principal Supervisor, Sep 2019 onwards

• CHRISTOPHER HIGGINS

  Nature of supervision:

  Joint Principal Supervisor, Oct 2019 onwards

• JACK WATKINS

  Nature of supervision:

  Joint Principal Supervisor, Oct 2018 onwards

• ROSE BYFLEET

  Nature of supervision:

  Joint Principal Supervisor, Jan 2021 onwards

Teaching

As well as participating in large survey modules on the Early Modern and Modern Worlds, I teach undergraduate modules on the Renaissance in Italy and Europe, the age of Reformations, Travellers and Maps in the Premodern World, and Witchcraft.

I teach MA options Power and Communication in Early Modern Europe, Venice and Istanbul 1453-1797, Popular Politics in Early Modern Italy, The Comparative History of Cities, Microhistory.

Publications