Moving targets: Finding Young People in the Early Modern World with Professor Nicholas Terpstra

Join Professor Nicholas Terpstra as he discusses where we can find youths in the histories of the early modern world and how they might reshape our understanding of the early modern period.

Entry is free to this event but bookings are essential.

The talk will be available to view live online via the Library's Facebook and YouTube pages. You do not need to book a ticket to watch the event online.

Professor Terpstra's visit is supported by the ANU Centre for Early Modern Studies on behalf of the International Consortium of Centres for Early Modern Studies.

About Professor Nicholas Terpstra

Professor Nicholas Terpstra is Professor of History at the University of Toronto. His primary area of research is early modern urban history, exploring both questions at the intersection of politics, religion, gender and charity, and issues having to do with space and sense. Recent works include Senses of Space in the Early Modern World (Cambridge: 2023), Lost and Found: Locating Foundlings in the Early Modern World (Rome: 2023) and Religious Refugees in the Early Modern World: An Alternative History of the Reformation (Cambridge: 2015). Earlier works, including the award-winning Cultures of Charity: Women and the Reform of Poor Relief in Renaissance Italy (Harvard: 2013) and the microhistory Lost Girls: Sex and Death in Renaissance Florence (Johns Hopkins: 2012), explored how the politics of charity frequently silenced women’s voices. 

In 2011 he launched the DECIMA (Digitally Encoded Census Information & Mapping Archive) Project, an online digital map of Renaissance Florence that has received grants from SSHRC and the AHRC (UK). Employing early modern census data and maps, the tool tracks and geo-references occupation, gender, and wealth patterns. DECIMA has trained dozens of student researchers while moving to the goal of producing 3D maps that convey what it was like to walk around a Renaissance city, hearing its sounds, moving through its buildings and seeing its artwork.

Professor Terpstra was President of the Renaissance Society of America from 2022-24 and has just been appointed Provost of Trinity College in the University of Toronto.

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