Dr Vincent Roy-Di Piazza
I am an early modern historian of science and religion, political economy, and the Northern World. I recently obtained my DPhil at Oxford (2022) in history of science, medicine, economic and social history.
I am currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Coucil. I am also the Hagströmer Fellow 2023 at the Hagströmer Library of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. I am an Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
Research Interests
• Early modern history of science, religion, and political economy
• History of the body, slavery, and race-making in the Enlightenment
• Global Northern European history
My peer-reviewed publications explore notions of African superiority, colonization and slavery (Intellectual History Review, 2023) Swedish climactic science in times of warfare (Etudes Germaniques, 2021) and the links between the afterlife, travelogues and extra-terrestrialism in the early modern period (Annals of Science, 2020).
I am a specialist of the life and works of Swedish parliamentarian, philosopher and theologian Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) and have a broader interest in currents related to his ideas and posterity (millenarianism, abolitionism, environmental thought).
My doctoral thesis, titled 'Homo Maximus: Emanuel Swedenborg and the interaction of soul and body' provided a new intellectual biography of Swedenborg centred on his lifelong interest for the soul-body problem within the debate's scientific, religious and socio-political contexts. My DPhil was fully funded by the British research council (AHRC-DTP), the Gilbert Ryle scholarship at Linacre College, and the inaugural SDS scholarship by the Swedenborg Society in London during four years (2018-2022).
Contact
You can find out more about my research on my Personal webpage and reach out via Twitter: @RoyDiPiazza