John Condren

Biography

John Condren completed a degree in Law and European Studies at the University of Limerick in 2009; an MLitt in Reformation Studies at St Andrews in 2010; and, after a year’s break, a PhD at the same institution in 2015. His research concerns the fragile relationships between the small states of northern Italy and the French monarchy in the second half of the seventeenth century, specifically the attempts of the dukes of Parma, Modena, and Mantua-Monferrato to maintain their sovereign autonomy in the face of Louis XIV’s frequent attempts to extend his considerable influence to Italy. He was currently preparing this thesis as a book manuscript, provisionally entitled Louis XIV and the Peace of Italy, which will expand to consider economic and cultural exchange between Louisquatorzian France and the Italian peninsula (including papal Rome), and the language of maintaining peace during a century in which Europe was ravaged by successive geopolitical, economic, and social crises. During a year’s teaching at the University of Limerick (2015-16), He taught on modules assessing the sources used for the study of history, and on eighteenth-and nineteenth-century Irish history. I also delivered a first-year module on the political, military and social history of early modern Ireland.

Research Interest

Dynasticism, cultural exchange, cultural and religious diplomacy, war and society in the early modern period (with especial regard to the Italian peninsula); more generally, the broad sweep of European history between 1450 and 1789.