Joan-Pau Rubiés graduated in Early Modern History at the University of Barcelona (1987), where he received the extraordinary degree prize. He went on to do a PhD at the University of Cambridge, funded with an external studentship from King's College (1987-1991). He was subsequently Research Fellow at Queens's College, Cambridge, and Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence. In 1994 he became Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Reading, and in 1999 he joined London School of Economics and Political Science, where he was Reader in International History. In 2012 he accepted the offer of a Research Professorship at ICREA, which he holds at Universitat Pompeu Fabra. He has been visiting professor at the École des Hautes Études (Paris and Marseille), Corpus Christi College (Oxford) and Villa I Tatti (Florence). He is currently leading a Research Project on Ethnographies, Religious Missions and Cultural Encounters in the Early Modern World.
Research interests
I am a historian specialized in the study of cross-cultural encounters in the early modern world, from a perspective combining the contextual analysis of ethnographic sources with the intellectual history of early modern Europe. My focus in the last few years has been analyzing early modern ethnography and its intellectual impact in the period 1500-1800. This has involved developing various parallel lines of analysis, including travel writing, cross-cultural diplomacy, religious missions, early orientalism, race and racism, and the history of cosmopolitanism. A growing concern has been to develop a global comparative perspective on these various topics (including Asia and the New World) that might help interrogate critically the eurocentric categories of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. I coordinate the Research Grup on Ethnographies, Cultural Encounters and Religious Missions in the Iberian World (ECERM) at UPF, which has received funding from the ERC, AGAUR (SGR) and MINECO.
Selected publications
- Rubiés JP & Safier N 2023, 'Cosmopolitanism and the Enlightenment', Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Includes Rubiés JP & Safier N, 'Introduction', pp. 1-33.
- Rubiés JP 2023, ‘The Cosmopolitan Paradox: Travel, Anthropology and the Problem Cultural Diversity in Early Modern Thought'. In J. P. Rubiés & N. Safier (Eds.), Cosmopolitanism and the Enlightenment, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 55-90.
- Rubiés, JP 2023, 'Pietro della Valle: Christian pilgrimage, antiquarianism and cosmopolitanism in the age of the baroque', Mediterranean Historical Review 38/2, 221-250.
- Rubiés JP 2023, ‘Foreword: The Jesuit Antoni de Montserrat, European interpreter of Emperor Akbar’. in João Vicente Melo (ed.) The Writings of Antoni de Montserrat at the Mughal Court, Brill: Leiden and Boston, VII-XXVII.
- Rubiés JP 2023, ‘Sovereignty and democratic legitimacy in Spain: The case of Catalonia’, in Julia Rone, Nathalie Brack, et alii. eds. Sovereignty in Conflict: Political, Constitutional and Economic Dilemmas in the EU. Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics, pp. 67-94.
Selected research activities
The highlight of the year was the publication of Cosmopolitanism and the Enlightenment, the culmination of a project of many years with some of the leading scholars in the field. The book was successfully launched in Cambridge in June. In 2023 I was visiting Fellow at Corpus Christi College, and in the fall visitng professor in the Harvard Centre for the Study of the Italian Renaissance at Villa I Tatti, developing a new project on Rethinking the Global Renaissance. I gave a keynote lecture in York on ‘The Marvellous, the Wonderful and the Credible: Text and Authority in Early Sixteenth-Century Travel Accounts’, and various other talks, including ‘Reading Histories of the Indies in the Sixteenth Century and Today' (Oxford) and ‘Religion and Sacrifice in the early modern ethnography of Africa’ (Bologna).