The historian of science Lavinia Maddaluno will be the fourth IHC Visiting Scholar, i.e. she will be our special guest for a short programme of research and advanced training activities in the context of the IHC’s Platform of Advanced Studies.

Lavinia Maddaluno is Assistant Professor of Modern History in the Department of Humanities at the Università Ca’ Foscari in Venice. Her main interest is exploring the nexus between human beings, nature, and the economy in early modern Europe, and she has just completed her first monograph, Science and political Economy in Enlightenment Milan (1760-1805), which will be published by Liverpool University Press later this year. She has also published works on topics such as hydraulic practices in Marseille during Colbert’s mercantilism, olive oil production in Rome in the 18th century, or public health in Renaissance Milan.

During her visit to the IHC, she will hold two public activities: on 16 July, she will present a lecture on the socio-economic, cultural, scientific, technological, and medical responses to the expansion of rice cultivation in northern Italy between the 16th and 19th centuries — “Rice: ersatz, cultural artifact, object of knowledge, unruly crop“; on 19 July, at a research seminar in which Ricardo Noronha and José Miguel Ferreira will also take part, she will present a paper on a case of hydraulic intervention in rural areas of northern Italy in the 18th century, namely the hydraulic pump made by Carlo Castelli and used to claim lands — “Perpetuating private property: machines and hydraulics at the time of the Enlightenment“.

Both activities are free and will take place at the National Library of Portugal, but registration is required to take part in the seminar on 19 July (via email to miguelcarmo@fcsh.unl.pt by 17 July).