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 the Department of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He was Reader in International History at the LSE until 2012, when 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 twice (Paris and Marseille). Corpus Christi College (Oxford), the Harvard University Centre for Renaissance Studies at Villa I Tatti (Florence), and Roma Tre (Rome).
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 2024, 'Distance and Credibility in Sixteenth-Century Travel Writing. Discovery, Text and Truth in Varthema, Vespucci, and Pigafetta’, in Far from the Truth. Distance, Informatiom and Credibility in the Early Modern World, eds. Michiel van Groesen and Johannes Müller, Routledge: Haklut Society Studies in the History of Travel, 36-68.
- Rubiés JP 2024, 'Juan González de Mendoza and the European discovery of China', in Diego Sola, The chronicler of China. Juan González de Mendoza, between Mission, Empire and History. London and New York, Routledge. 1-17.
- Rubiés JP 2024, Margherita Trento, 'Writing Tamil Catholicism. Literature, Persuasion and Devotion in the Eighteenth Century', Journal of early modern history, 28 - 3 - 259 - 262.
Selected research activities
I spent the first half of 2024 completing my sabbatical in Rome, as Visiting Professor at Università Roma Tre. Whilst in Italy I gave various seminar talks, including in Roma Tre on Pietro della Valle as pilgrim, in Roma la Sapienza on early modern racism, at the Univesity of Bologna on rethinking the Global Renaissance, and at the University of Florence on 'Ethnographic albums and imperial knowledge in the Iberian East: the Boxer Codex and the Casanatense Codex compared’. The highlight of the year was the Josephine W. Bennett Lecture which I delivered in Chicago as the keynote to the 70th annual conference of the Renaissance Society of America, on the 'Renaissance of Encounters and the Renaissance of Antiquities' (now forthcoming in Renaissance Quarterly). I also participated in a workshop in Brasenose College in Oxford on the concept of early modernity, where I spoke about the Global Renaissance and the problem of Eurocentrism. At UPF I co-organized a colloquium on El Carnero y la Sociedad Colonial de Nueva Granada, and spoke about the figure of the devil, idolatry and ideas of moral disorder. Finally, in Groningen I gave a talk on the various meanings of cosmopolitanism and tolerance in the early modern world.