Languages, Literatures, & Cultures

Katherine is an Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow in the Discipline of Italian at the University of Galway, where she is based in the Moore Institute. Katherine¿s interdisciplinary research engages with early modern Italian devotional practices and material culture, focusing on the material text. From 2018-2019, Katherine was an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Wolf Humanities Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Katherine earned her PhD in Italian from the University of Cambridge in 2018.She has taught Italian literature, the history of medieval and Renaissance religion, and the history of material culture and decorative arts. Katherine has also worked on curatorial and collections research projects for permanent collections and for exhibitions in museums in the US and UK. She has published on Italian decorative arts and material culture, women in early modern Italy, early modern devotional objects and practices, print culture, and daily life in Renaissance Europe.

Her recent publications include:

"Luxury and Everyday," in A Cultural History of Shopping in the Early Modern Age, vol.3, ed. by Tim Reinke-Williams (London: Bloomsbury Academic. 2022), 91-117 

Co-authored with Anne O'Connor and Rhiannon Daniels, "Italian Material Cultures," Italian Studies, 75th Anniversary Special Issue: Directions in Italian Studies (2020), pp. 155-175, peer reviewed 

 "Material Prayers and Maternity in Early Modern Italy: Signed, Sealed, Delivered," in Domestic Devotions in Early Modern Italy, ed. by Maya Corry, Marco Faini, and Alessia Meneghin (Leiden: Brill, published online 2018, in print 2019), pp. 244-271 [Available Open Access]