Stephen Cummins

I am a historian of early modern Europe, with a primary interest in southern Italy and other parts of the Spanish Empire in the Mediterranean. My work has mostly focused on the history of justice, violence and civil conflict using a variety of methodologies and approaches including the history of emotions. I am currently interested in the aftermath of the bloody civil conflicts known as the Neapolitan Revolution of 1647-8 and the devastating plague of 1656. My current work also explores questions about the social impact and experiences of anti-banditry military campaigns in southern Italy. 

My monograph States of enmity: the politics of hatred in the early modern Kingdom of Naples (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2024) focuses on enmity and reconciliation between justice, politics and community in southern Italy. My interest in peace-making and the management of conflict in ancien régime societies also led to the publication of Cultures of Conflict Resolution in Early Modern Europe which I co-edited with Laura Kounine. I am also the editor of special issues of the Journal of Religious History and Social Science History.

In my current research, as well as continuing my work on the practical and emotional aspects of the everyday navigation of justice, I am exploring the transnational careers of southern Italian bandits and the effect of forced military billeting in communities around the Spanish Empire. I am also interested in the political uses of criminal justice in early modern Italy: how and with what effect criminal proceedings were used as strategic or tactical tools in early modern Italy. Related to this is my interest in the functions that criminalized actors played in early modern politics, notably outlaws. I am drawing from the anthropology of corruption and practical moralities to develop new lines of inquiry to explore these aspects of early modern politics in their full social and subjective dimensions.

I gained my degrees at the University of Cambridge as a member of Corpus Christi College (BA starred first graduating at top of tripos and MPhil with distinction) and Christ’s College (PhD). I was foundation scholar at Corpus Christi and Robert Owen Bishop research scholar at Christ’s. After my PhD at Cambridge, I  was a post-doctoral fellow and researcher at the Center for the History of Emotions at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin.

I have taught history at the University of Cambridge, the Humboldt University of Berlin and the Free University of Berlin.

I have also been an award-holder at the British School at Rome, a fellow at the Academy for Advanced Studies in the Renaissance and I am currently Deborah Loeb Brice Fellow at Villa I Tatti, Harvard’s Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence.