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About Me

My research focuses on relationships in maritime trading networks (1450-1650), and early contacts between ‘Australasia’ and Europe.

I am an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies (SHAPS) at The University of Melbourne. Prior to this, I was an ARC Discovery Early Career Research Fellow in SHAPS (May 2014-May 2017). In 2016 I was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (UK). I spent Michaelmas Term 2013 as a resident Senior Research Visitor at Keble College, Oxford, mapping networks of interlinked relationships across time and space in the late fifteenth and sixteenth century Atlantic, specifically looking at the role of the ‘Spanish wife’ and the influence of the Merchant Taylors. In 2010 (2 years after I was awarded my PhD) I received an International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World at Harvard University short-term grant to supporting my archival research in archives in Seville.

 

 

Recent Publications

Books:

1. Monograph: Merchants and Explorers: Roger Barlow, Sebastian Cabot and Networks of Atlantic Exchange, 1500 – 1560 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).

Edited Books:

2. Keeping Family in an Age of Long Distance Trade, Imperial Expansion, and Exile, 1550-1850, edited by H. Dalton (Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, Nov. 2020).

• ‘The Ledger of Thomas Howell Draper of London 1521-1527. From the transcript made by John H. Brierley.’ Introduced & edited by H. Dalton (forthcoming).

Journal Articles:

3. ‘Frederick II of Hohenstaufen’s Australasian cockatoo: symbol of detente between East and West and evidence of the Ayyubid Sultanate’s global reach’, co-authored with Jukka Salo, Pekka Niemelä and Simo Örmä. Parergon 35/1 (2018): 35-60.
4. ‘A Sulphur-crested Cockatoo in fifteenth century Mantua: Rethinking symbols of sanctity and patterns of trade.’ Renaissance Studies 28/5 (2014): 676-694.

Book Chapters:

5. ‘Santiago Matamoros/Mataindios: Adopting an Old World Battlefield Apparition as a New World Representation of Triumph’ in Matters of Engagement: Emotions, Identity, and Cultural Contact in the Premodern World, eds Daniela Hacke, Claudia Jarzebowski and Hannes Ziegler (Abingdon: Routledge, Nov. 2021), 95-123.
6. ‘Introduction: Keeping Family’ in Keeping Family in an Age of Long Distance Trade, Imperial Expansion and Exile, 1550-1850, ed. Heather Dalton (Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, Nov. 2020), 13-25.
7. ‘Relationships lost and found in the mid sixteenth century Iberian Atlantic: an Englishman’s “suffering rewarded”’ in Keeping Family in an Age of Long Distance Trade, Imperial Expansion, and Exile, 1550-1850, ed. Heather Dalton (Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, Nov. 2020), 149-168.
8. ‘Portraits, Pearls and Things “wch are very straunge to owres”: The lost collections of the Thorne/Withypoll Trading Syndicate, 1520–1550’ in Early Modern Merchants as Collectors, Christina Anderson (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), 31-46.
9. ‘”Making Feast of the Prisoner”: Roger Barlow, Hans Staden, and Ideas of New World Cannibalism’ in Religion, Visual Culture and the Supernatural in Early Modern Europe. An Album Amicorum for Charles Zika, eds Jennifer Spinks and Dagmar Eichberger, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 187-211.
10. ‘”Into speyne to selle for slavys”: English, Spanish, and Genoese Merchant Networks and Their Involvement with the “Cost of Gwynea” Trade before 1550′ in Brokers Of Change: Atlantic Commerce And Cultures In Pre-Colonial Western Africa, ed. Toby Green, British Academy Proceedings Series (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 91-23.
11. ‘Negotiating Fortune: English merchants in Early Sixteenth Century Seville’ in Bridging Early Modern Atlantic Worlds: People, Products and Practices on the Move, ed. Caroline Williams (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009), 57-73.
12. ‘Fashioning New Worlds from Old Words: Roger Barlow’s A Brief Summe of Geographie,’ in Old Worlds, New Worlds: European Cultural Encounters 1100-1750, eds Lisa Bailey, Lindsay Diggelmann and Kim Phillips (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), 75-98.
13. 1. ODNB Article: Barlow, Roger (c.1483 -1553) merchant and explorer, ODNB (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015): http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/68874.
    2. Invited Blog Entry: ‘The Cabot Project’ for The Hakluyt Society’s Blog about the History of Travel, Exploration & Global Encounters, 14 May 2015, https://hakluytsociety.wordpress.com/
       

    Non-Refereed Publications:

    3. ‘The Spanish Connection: Bristol’s 16th Century Slave Traders.’ Bristol’s Black History (Oct 2020). https://www.bristolmuseums.org.uk/stories/bristols-black-history/
    4. ‘Medieval Trade Routes: Images conjure up a world where indigenous Southeast Asians plied the waters to Australia’s north.’ BBC History Magazine, (September 2018): 14.
    5. ‘How did a cockatoo reach 13th century Sicily?’ Pursuit (25 June 2018). https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/how-did-a-cockatoo-reach-13th-century-sicily.

Media Coverage

My recent work on cockatoos (from the Indo-Australian Archipelago) in medieval and Renaissance European artworks has aroused much scholarly and public interest. I have given 27 international press, radio and TV interviews since 2014 as a result of the pub

Social Media

Country Focus

Expertise by Geography

Australia, British Isles, England, Latin America, Mediterranean, Spain, United Kingdom, Western Europe

Expertise by Chronology

Medieval, Pre-17th century

Expertise by Topic

Colonialism, Economic History, Family, Material Culture, Migration & Immigration, Religion, Slavery, Women