Dr David A. Lines

Associate Professor / Senior Lecturer

Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Italian

Director of Graduate Studies, Centre for the Study of the Renaissance

 

Teaching and research interests

All aspects of European thought and learning from around 1250 to around 1750. I have particular expertise in the following:

  • The classical tradition (Aristotelianism and ancient thought more generally) in Renaissance Europe: interactions of Greek, Latin, and the vernacular
  • Renaissance intellectual history, especially ethics, politics, and science and their configuration in humanism and scholasticism
  • Institutions of culture and learning (particularly universities), with special focus on Bologna and Italy
  • Libraries and history of the book (particularly the library of Ulisse Aldrovandi)


Academic profile

BA (Bryan College, 1987), MA (English, UNC-Chapel Hill, 1991), AM, PhD (History, Harvard University, 1997)

Born and raised in Italy, I acquired my passion for the classical languages and the history of thought at the Liceo Classico, but did all of my university studies in the United States: I studied History, English, and classical Greek for my BA, focused on English and American literature for the MA, and then proceeded on a scholarship to Harvard, where I obtained my PhD in History under the direction of James Hankins. Among my awards while a PhD student were a William J. Fulbright fellowship, a Frances A. Yates short-term fellowship at the Warburg Institute, and the Ezio Franceschini fellowship for mediaeval literature and philology at the Certosa del Galluzzo in Florence. After various postdoctoral fellowships in the Netherlands and Germany (including an Alexander von Humboldt research fellowship and a DFG postdoctoral fellowship, both spent at the Seminar für Geistesgeschichte und Philosophie der Renaissance in Munich) I was Assistant Professor of History at the University of Miami, Florida (2002-2006). I joined the Italian Department at the University of Warwick in Autumn 2006 after spending a year as Deborah Loeb Brice Fellow at Villa I Tatti (The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence). I became Associate Professor in 2009 and serve as Director of Graduate Studies both for Warwick’s Centre for the Study of the Renaissance and for the Department of Italian.

In addition to awards for personal research I am currently managing three grants:

• an AHRC collaborative research award on 'Vernacular Aristotelianism in Renaissance Italy, c. 1400–c. 1650' (2010–13)

• a Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship for Dr Eva Del Soldato (2012–14)

• a Leverhulme International Network (2012–15) on 'Renaissance Conflict and Rivalries: Cultural Polemics in Europe, c. 1300–c. 1650', involving Warwick, the Warburg Institute, the Universities of Bonn, Leuven, Venice, and Florence, and potentially other partners


PhD students currently supervised

Greg Wells, 'John Hall's Little Book of Cures (1611-1635): A New Translation' (co-supervised with Claudia Stein, History).

Gabriella Addivinola, 'Liminal Writing: Apophatic Tradition and the Form of the Divine Comedy​' (co-supervised with Simon Gilson, Italian).

Contact details

Room H410
Tel: 024 76 523 250
Email: D.A.Lines@warwick.ac.uk