Joshua Rushton

Joshua Rushton

Dr

Personal profile

Overview

Profile

I am a social and cultural historian of early modern religious life with a focus on Catholicism and Italy. From September 2024 I am Lecturer in Early Modern History here at Manchester. I completed my BA in History and MA in Renaissance Studies at the University of Warwick and was awarded my PhD by the University of Leeds in 2023. My doctoral project, funded by the AHRC, examined the relationship between urban devotional life, Catholic Reform, and sacred immanence in the city of Venice. In 2024 I held a Visiting Research Fellowship at the University of Leeds where I began revising my thesis into a monograph under the working title Encountering the Sacred in Early Modern Venice, 1500-1750. In addition to preparing my doctoral research for publication, I am developing a new research project on Catholicism and the environment in early modern Italy.

 

Research interests

My research focuses on understanding how early modern religious change was understood and experienced. I connect my study of early modern Catholicism to broader cultural and spiritual shifts such as changes in Christian worldviews, assumptions about the nature of the holy, and more recently, environmental change. I have broader interests in the history of print, the European Reformations, and environmental humanities. 

 

Publications

Journal articles 

‘Nourishing Catholic souls in post-Tridentine miracle narratives’, Renaissance Studies (published online May 2024) https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/rest.12943

Book reviews 

Review of The Inner Life of Catholic Reform: From the Council of Trent to the Enlightenment by Ulrich L. Lehner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), Renaissance Studies (published online March 2024) https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/rest.12930

Review of Sacred Journeys in the Counter-Reformation: Long-Distance Pilgrimage in Northwest Europe by Elizabeth C. Tingle (Boston: De Gruyter Press, 2020), Social History, 46.4 (2021), 462-464

Review of Venice’s Secret Service: Organising Intelligence in The Renaissance by Ioanna Iordanou (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), Journal of Intelligence History, 20.2 (2021), 244-246

Public facing articles 

‘Reading Love Magic in Sixteenth-Century Italy: The Cases of Andriana Savorgnan and Lucrezia the Greek’, The Enquiring Eye Journal of the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic, 1.1 (2017), 40-44

 

Teaching and Student Education

I am passionate about engaging my students with the early modern world and the discipline of history more generally. My teaching makes robust use of primary sources including the excellent holdings of the Manchester Museum and John Rylands Research Institute and Library. I am an Associate Fellow of Advance HE and work to incorporate pedagogical innovation into my History teaching, particlaly in the area of academic skills development. I teach on all levels of the BA History programme and contribute to a range of postgraduate modules on various programmes delivered by the School of Arts, Languages, and Cultures. An indicative list of modules I teach:

Year 1

HIST10101: History in Practice

HIST10302: Forging a New World: Europe c. 1450-1750

Year 2

HIST121182: Back to the Future: The Uses and Abuses of History

Year 3

HIST32242: Cultural Entanglements: Life & Death in Colonial America

HIST30970: History Dissertation

Postgraduate  

HIST65182: Gender, Sexuality & the Body

SALC61082: Critical Ecologies

 

Expertise related to UN Sustainable Development Goals

In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. This person’s work contributes towards the following SDG(s):

  • SDG 4 - Quality Education
  • SDG 11 - Sustainable Cities and Communities
  • SDG 13 - Climate Action