I am on research leave from Purdue University until December 2024 and in residence at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos as a recipient of the María Zambrano post-doctoral fellowship. I am very excited to be part of the award-winning research group, CINTER (Court, Image, Nobility and Territories), and look forward to organizing scholarly events while pursuing individual and collaborative research projects. We have already convened an international congress on “Female Succession in Late Medieval and Early Modern Monarchy. Contestation, Conflict and Compromise” that took place in Aranjuez, one of the URJC’s five campuses, on May 24-26, 2023.
During my stay in Madrid, I will carry out research in archives, libraries, and museums mostly in Spain, with shorter stays planned in France (Paris and Versailles), Italy (Turin and Milan), and Austria (Vienna). The research is planned as part of different publications.
“The Spanish Habsburgs (1500-1700): The Men and the Women who Ruled the First Global Empire”
This single-authored book on will be the first to focus on the senior branch of the Habsburgs—the Spanish—in distinction to what was the cadet branch, the Austrians. My intention is to give Habsburg women the protagonist role that they played in creating, ruling, protecting, and shaping the history of early modern Spain. It is based on my own research and incorporates new scholarship on Habsburg women and Spanish history and culture during the Habsburg period.
Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez, Infanta María Teresa (1638-1683), hacia 1652-1653. Copyright © Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
“Marie Thérèse of Austria: Infante of Spain, Queen of France”
This biography of the Spanish-born Queen of France, Marie Thérèse of Austria (1638-1683), will be co-authored with my colleague, Jonathan Spangler, at Manchester Metropolitan University. This project brings together our respective expertise, mine in early modern Spain, Jonathan’s in early modern France. She was the second Spanish Infanta who became queen consort in France and while she played a critical role in the history of the two monarchies and the continent and is an important figure in her own right, has, for too long, lived in the historical shadow of her more famous husband, Louis XIV of France (r. 1643-1715).
“Site of Power: Mariana of Austria and the Palace of Uceda, 1679-1696”
The imposing building located in the corner of Bailen and Calle Mayor in Madrid was known in the seventeenth century by the name of the original owner. Don Cristóbal Gómez de Sandoval, 1st Duke of Uceda, the valido (a figure similar to that of a Prime Minister) of Philip III from 1618 to 1621, commissioned the palace in the 1610s. The building continued to play a central political role in the court city when Don Luis de Haro, the valido of Philip IV, lived in it from 1643 until his death in 1661. When Mariana of Austria (1634-1696), mother of King Carlos II (r. 1665-1700), made it her principal residence, the palace became a center of not just politics, but international diplomacy as it played out in the city of Madrid, the epicenter of the Spanish global empire. This project establishes Queen Mariana’s influence on the court of Carlos II, focusing on her activities in the Palace of Uceda, where she lived from November 26, 1679, until her death of breast cancer on May 16, 1696.