Research output per year
Research output per year
2021
Giulio Camillo’s Theatro della Sapientia: Theatres of Knowledge in the Early Modern Period
Author: Seip, Oscar, 2021
Supervisor: Milner, S. (main supervisor) and Brillaud, J. (second supervisor)
UoM administered thesis: PhD.
2016
Twentieth-century Italian Texts in Translation and Manchester's Carcanet Press
Author: Anne-Marie Stead, 2016
Supervisor: Milner, S (main supervisor) and Armstrong, G. (second supervisor)
UoM administered thesis: PhD.
Advisor
2019
Dante Alighieri's Divina commedia between the mid-Victorian Age and Early Modernism (1860-1935)
Author: Coluzzi, Federica, 2019
UoM administered thesis: PhD.
2015
Cultural Identity Reconstruction in the Translation of Modern Chinese Fiction
Author: Di Xiao, 2015
UoM administered thesis: PhD.
2012
Aspectual and Modal Periphrases in Modern Sardinian
Author: Casti, Francesco, 2012
UoM administered thesis: PhD.
2010
Using Men to Think with: the Reception of Augustine by Suo Juana Ines de la Cruz
Author: Fuller, Amy, 2010
UoM administered thesis: PhD.
The Culture of Technical Texts and its impact on Translation from English to Greek
Author: Papadoudi, Dafni, 2010
UoM administered thesis: PhD.
Existential Constructions in Early Italian Vernaculars
Author: Ciconte, Francesco Maria, 2010
UoM administered thesis: PhD.
OPEN ACCESS THESES
As a cultural historian I aim to produce a form of interdisciplinary history which draws on the Warburgian tradition in stressing the interrelation between linguistic, pictorial, material, and spatial practices in the articulation of cultural identities. My focus is mainly on late medieval and Renaissance Italy and on their reception in the nineteenth century. I am also interested in cultural translation in the broadest sense and in exploring new ways of reading and writing about the past whilst addressing the present. My two formative influences at undergraduate and graduate level were Peter Burke and Michael Baxandall.
Areas of particular interest include:
Rhetoric and the revival of popular vernacular oratory 1240-1512 / parchment printing and the bioarchaeology of the book/ Space and communal imagination in the late medieval communes / The medieval reception of Cicero, Sallust and Boethius / The Florentine republican territorial state under the Medici / Artistic patronage and cultural translation in Renaissance Italy / Cultural theory and the historiography of the Italian Renaissance / Cities and Urban Experience / Italy in Manchester in 19th Century
Collaborations and networks
I am on the Academic Advisory Board of the 5-year ERC-funded project 'Beasts to Craft: Biocodicology as a new approach to the study of parchment manuscripts' led by Prof. Matthew Collins. As Director of the BSR I oversaw multiple collaborations and joint research grant bids with UK and Commonwealth HEIs, fellow BIRI across the MENA region, universities in Italy and fellow Rome-based international Academies. I was on the Academic Advisory Board of the 4-year ERC-funded 'Oral Culture, Manuscript and Print in Early Modern Italy, 1450-1700' led by Prof. Brian Richardson and the Academic Advisory Board of the Mellon-funded 'Medici Archive Project' based in Florence. I was a participant in the AHRC funded 'Street Life and Street Culture Network' 2009-12 and a member of the steering group of the AHRC funded 'Historical Sociolinguistics Scientific Network' 2008-09. I was also involved in the 'cities@manchester' initiative which led to the foundation in 2017 of the Manchester Urban Institute (MUI) within the Faculty of Humanities. In 2013, I co-organised a two-day international conference in Manchester entitled 'Locating Boccaccio in 2013' and co-curated a six-month exhibition under the same title at the John Rylands Library. In 2015, I co-curated a further exhibition at the John Rylands Library, 'Merchants of Print: from Venice to Manchester' celebrating the 500th anniversary of the Venetian printer Aldus Manutius and his workshop.
Current projects
I am currently involved in a collaborative research project on printed parchment books in the Renaissance which is part of the 'Books and Beasts' initiative involving colleagues at the Universities of York, TCD, UPenn and Virginia.
Follow at @italprof
Videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fphTuyJXTcQ
BBC Imagine: 'Who's Afraid of Machiavelli' with Alan Yentob and Peter Capaldi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckOompd40sE
Stephen Milner: Industrial Dante
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0o5C9v3iT3k&list=PLSrOeGRW7I5ew3MsWgW4lu8yVyyA9upKl&index=2
Stephen Milner: Three decrees of separation: community, culture and contagion in pre-modern Italy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKeo27FU_O4
Stephen Milner and Hugh Petter: Lutyens and the British School at Rome
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvIsCyRI688
Stephen Milner: And did those feet in ancient time: Meditations on Movement
https://player.vimeo.com/video/39360141
Stephen Milner: The Information Economy of Renaissance Florence from Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marim, NYU.
I have been Serena Professor of Italian at the University of Manchester since 2006. Between 2017-21, I was seconded as Director of the British School at Rome (BSR), the UK’s largest British International Research Institute (BIRI) and Fine Arts Academy, the first non-Classicist or Archaeologist to hold the post (https://www.bsr.ac.uk/). I am currently Honorary President of the Manchester branch of the Società Dante Alighieri.
In 2012, I was Robert Lehman Visiting Professor at Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Centre for Italian Renaissance Studies, Florence. Between 1992-2006, I was Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in Italian at the University of Bristol and Lecturer in Italian at the University of Cambridge for the academic year 1991-92 and Visiting Lecturer in 1994 and 1997. I undertook my PhD. in Combined Historical Studies at the Warburg Institute, University of London under the mentorship of Michael Baxandall. As a postgraduate researcher, I held fellowships from the British Academy, the British School at Rome, the Leverhulme Trust and an Italian government award at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa.
I have held a number of research fellowships. In 2015, I secured a Katharine F. Pantzer Jr. Fellowship in Descriptive Bibliography, Houghton Library, Harvard University and in 2011-12 an AHRC Research Fellowship. In 2010 I was an International Society for the History of Rhetoric (ISHR) Research Fellow, and Research Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of Bristol in 2005-06. In 1999-2000, I was a Hannah Kiel Fellow at the Harvard University Centre for Renaissance Studies, Villa I Tatti, Florence and in 1998-99 I secured and AHRB Research Leave Fellowship.
As Director of the BSR, I managed the institution through both the Covid-19 pandemic and Brexit and oversaw a major programme of renovation and investment in the BSR’s buildings and infrastructure, including the restoration and conservation of the iconic Edwin Lutyens façade in 2018-19 and the completion of Stages 1-2 of a £13.5m BSR New Master Plan. In 2019, I lay the foundations for a major Management and Operational Review through commissioning external HR and Library & Archive Reviews and reforming the management of the BSR’s historic funds. I introduced a new Research Managment Policy and made strategic investments in Archaeology and Digital Humanities. I established a new cross-Faculty Architecture Advisory Committee to oversee the reform and coordination of architecture within the BSR's committee structures and extended both the Humanities and the Fine Arts programmes through new fellowships. I worked to coordinate the fellow BIRIs in presenting a unified brand and shared manifesto as part of the UK’s overseas research infrastructure within UKRI’s Research Landscape Survey and HMG’s 2019 Soft Power Review led by DCMS.
In Manchester, I was Head of Department of Italian until 2010 and again from 2012 during which time Italian at Manchester headed the NSS rankings for three consecutive years. In 2011, I proposed the re-launch of the John Rylands Research Institute at Manchester in a working paper 'Unlocking the Rylands: Stage 2', chairing the Working Party and authoring the JRRI Business Plan in 2012 which secured an initial £1.2 million to unlock the library's world leading special collections (https://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/rylands/).
I have served as a member of the AHRC Peer Review College (2017-21), sat on the Rome Committee of the Keats Shelley House (2017-20) and Steering Committee of the Unione Internazionale degli Istituti di Archeologia, Storia e Storia dell’Arte in Roma (2017-20). I was on the Executive Committee of the Society for Italian Studies (2011-2016) and a member of the Faculty of Archaeology, History and Letters of the British School at Rome (2007-13). I was Honorary Secretary of the Society for Renaissance Studies between 1992-98. I have served on the editorial boards of Italian Studies, Renaissance Studies, Annali di storia di Firenze and Papers of the British School at Rome. I am, and have been, on the Academic Advisory Boards of the Mellon-funded 'Medici Archive Project’ and the ERC-funded 'Italian Voices' and ‘Books to Craft’ projects. I am a member of the Society for Italian Studies, the Renaissance Society of America, and the International Society for the History of Rhetoric.
Doctor of Philosophy, Combined Historical Studies, Warburg Institute
Award Date: 1 Sep 1996
Bachelor of Arts, History, University of Cambridge
Award Date: 20 Jun 1985
Honorary President, Societa Dante Alighieri (Manchester)
2019 → …
Director, The British School at Rome
1 Oct 2017 → 4 Jan 2021
Senior Lecturer, University of Bristol
1 Sep 1992 → 31 Aug 2006
Lecturer, University of Cambridge
1 Sep 1991 → 30 Jul 1992
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter › peer-review
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter › peer-review
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Foreword/postscript › peer-review
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Foreword/postscript › peer-review
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Foreword/postscript › peer-review
Milner, Stephen (Recipient), 1998
Prize: Fellowship awarded competitively
Milner, Stephen (Recipient), 2010
Prize: Fellowship awarded competitively
Milner, Stephen (Recipient), 1989
Prize: Fellowship awarded competitively
Milner, Stephen (Recipient), 1999
Prize: Fellowship awarded competitively
Stephen Milner (Speaker)
Activity: Talk or presentation › Invited talk
Stephen Milner (Speaker)
Activity: Talk or presentation › Invited talk
Stephen Milner (Speaker) & Julianne Simpson (Speaker)
Activity: Talk or presentation › Invited talk
Stephen Milner (Speaker)
Activity: Talk or presentation › Invited talk
Stephen Milner (Speaker)
Activity: Talk or presentation › Invited talk
10/08/17
1 item of Media coverage
Press/Media: Other
Stephen Milner, Julianne Simpson & Caroline Checkley-Scott
1/04/14
1 Media contribution
Press/Media: Blogs and social media
3/12/13
1 Media contribution
Press/Media: Research
19/02/13
1 Media contribution
Press/Media: Expert comment