Participant Info
- First Name
- Rachel
- Last Name
- Midura
- Country
- United States
- State
- VA Virginia
- rmidura@vt.edu
- Affiliation
- Virginia Tech
- Website URL
- https://emdigit.org
- Keywords
- early modern, digital history, digital humanities, italy, habsburg, espionage, surveillance, intelligence, communications, information, postal history
- Availability
- Media Contact
- Additional Contact Information
- PhD
- PhD
Personal Info
- Photo
- About Me
I am an Assistant Professor of Digital History at Virginia Tech in August 2020. I recently completed my dissertation, “Masters of the Post: Northern Italy and European Communications Networks 1530-1730” at Stanford University, where I was a senior graduate fellow at the Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis. I approach the seventeenth century as an information age created by the printing press and the European postal network. In my research, I revisit traditional social, cultural and material historical approaches to incorporate twenty-first century understanding of media and social networks. I read across the vast digitization projects of recent years to synthesize new historical models for communication. I am dedicated to increasing the accessibility of historical knowledge through digital curation and annotation, as shown by my work managing collaborations related to the Republic of Letters Project, such as The Grand Tour Explorer.
- Recent Publications
“Itinerated Europe: Early Modern Spatial Networks in Printed Itineraries, 1545-1747” in The Journal of Social History (Forthcoming)
“Messengers and Couriers” in Kristen Poole, ed., The Routledge Encyclopedia of the Renaissance World (Routledge, Forthcoming)
“Policing in Print: Social Control in Spanish & Borromean Milan, 1535-1584” in Nina Lamal, Helmer Helmers, ed.s, Print and Power in Early Modern Europe (Brill, 2020)
“Publishing the Baroque Post” in Renaissance of Letters, Paula Findlen and Suzanne Sutherland, ed.s, (Routledge Press, 2019)
- Media Coverage
- Social Media
- https://twitter.com/rcmidura
- Country Focus
- Italy & Central Europe
- Expertise by Geography
- Western Europe
- Expertise by Chronology
- Pre-17th century, 17th century, Early Modern
- Expertise by Topic
- Book History, Computational, Diplomacy, Libraries & Archives, Politics, Rebellion & Revolution, Religion, Technology
