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Dr James Shaw
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Major Publications
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Biography
James Shaw joined the History Department at the University of Sheffield in 2005. He was an undergraduate at the University of Edinburgh and completed his Ph.D. at the European University Institute in Florence (1998). He subsequently held a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Oxford, for a research project examining petty crime and small claims litigation in early modern Venice. This research won a British Academy Competition for Postdoctoral Monographs and following publication in 2006 as The Justice of Venice: Authorities and Liberties in the Urban Economy, 1550-1700, was awarded the Gladstone Prize of the Royal Historical Society. See the review in the American Historical Review. In collaboration with Prof. Evelyn Welch, he was Postdoctoral Researcher for the Wellcome Trust project Selling Health in Renaissance Italy from 2002 to 2005, based at the University of Sussex and subsequently Queen Mary University of London. The project examined how pharmaceutical remedies were bought and sold in Renaissance Italy. Through quantitative analysis of the accounts of an apothecary shop, it showed how such businesses acted as intermediaries between changing medical theories and contemporary practice. At the same time, the project emphasized how exchange in this period was strongly embedded in personal connections. This research was published in 2011 as Making and Marketing Medicine in Renaissance Florence. See the reviews in the Oxford, Cambridge and Chicago Journals. James won a Senate Award for Excellence in Learning and Teaching in 2009. Membership of Professional Bodies
Research
Current Research His research focuses on the relationship of legal structures (laws, practices, institutions) to the daily practices of economic life. During 2009-10, he examined credit disputes in early modern Florence through close study of supplications for justice. These sources are invaluable for presenting credit disputes embedded in a narrative of personal circumstances, providing rich evidence of market practices, laws and ethics, as well as key aspects of the operation of justice, authority and power in the early modern state. His new project applies this approach to early modern Venice using denunciations for fraud. Here plaintiffs typically made a moral case that their contractual relations must be interpreted with regard to personal circumstances, in contrast to the normally dry and formal records of debt litigation. James aims to use these records to explore what ethical and legal concepts meant in practice for those operating in the market. Together with Dr. Simon Middleton, James is presently seeking to develop a research group with interests in the operation of markets, laws and ethics in the early modern period. He welcomes contacts with other researchers working in this field, particularly where the approach spans legal, economic and social history.
Research Supervision and Teaching James welcomes applications from postgraduate students with an interest in the history of early modern Italy, particularly projects adopting social, economic and legal approaches. James teaches early modern history, with a particular interest in Italy, and especially Florence and Venice.
Current PhD Students Richard Scott - 'Dreams Will Become Realities': Dreams and the Passions in Early Modern England. Administrative Roles and Responsibilities
Previously, James has served as Senior Tutor, Level 3 Tutor and Unfair Means Officer. Selected Publications
Books - Making and Marketing Medicine in Renaissance Florence, (co-authored with Evelyn Welch), Wellcome Series in the History of Medicine, (Amsterdam, Rodopi, 2011). - The Justice of Venice: Authorities and Liberties in the Urban Economy, 1550-1700, British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship Monograph (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
Articles and Essays - 'Market Ethics and Credit Practices in Sixteenth-Century Tuscany', Renaissance Studies (2012). - 'Writing to the Prince: Supplications, Equity, and Absolutism in Sixteenth-Century Tuscany', Past & Present (2012). - 'Zanobi Machiavelli, Battista Strozzi and the high altar of the Badia Fiesolana', Burlington Magazine 153, no. 1305 (2011). - 'Liquidation or Certification? Small Claims Disputes and Retail Credit in Seventeenth-Century Venice' in Buyers and Sellers: Retail circuits and practices in medieval and early modern Europe eds. Bruno Blondé, Peter Stabel, Jon Stobart and Ilja Van Damme, Studies in European Urban History (1100-1800), (Turnhout, Belgium, Brepols, 2006). - 'Institutional Controls and the Retail of Paintings: The Painters' Guild of Early Modern Venice' in Mapping markets for paintings: Europe and the New World, 1450-1750, eds. Neil De Marchi and Hans J. Van Miegroet, (Turnhout, Belgium, Brepols, 2006). - 'Justice in the Marketplace: Corruption at the Giustizia Vecchia in Early Modern Venice' in Institutional Culture in Early Modern Society, eds. Anne Goldgar and Robert I. Frost, (Leiden, Brill, 2004) pp. 281-316. - 'Retail, Monopoly and Privilege: The Dissolution of the Fishmongers' Guild of Venice, 1599', Journal of Early Modern History 6, no. 4 (2002), pp. 396-427. |
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