Stefano Villani

Stefano Villani is Professor of Early Modern European History at the University of Maryland. He received his Ph.D. in Early Modern History from the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa (1999) and holds an M.A. (Laura) in the History of Philosophy from the University of Pisa. From 2002 until 2013 he was a member of the Department of History at the University of Pisa.

 Villani is a specialist in early modern religious history and has worked extensively on the cross-cultural, political, and religious relations between Britain and Italy. He has written five books, co-edited four volumes of essays, and has published more than one hundred articles, book chapters, and reviews. His first three books published in Italy deal with the history of Quaker missions in the Mediterranean. More recently he has worked on the history of the missionary and intellectual interactions between the Church of England and Italy. His latest book, Making Italy Anglican: Why the Book of Common Prayer Was Translated into Italian (Oxford University Press, 2022), is a comprehensive study of the Italian translations of the Book of Common Prayer undertaken between 1608 and the early twentieth century.

 Villani has been awarded several fellowships including at the Harry Ransom Center (University of Texas, Austin); the Folger Shakespeare Library (Washington DC); and the Beinecke Library (Yale University). He was visiting professor at Sapienza University, Rome in 2020. He has co-organized numerous professional conferences, workshops, and seminars including the series of three conferences on The Jews in Italy During the Long Renaissance held in Rome, Maryland (Johns Hopkins and UMD), and Jerusalem from 2019-2020.

He is one of the founders of EMoDiR (Early Modern Religious Dissents and Radicalism), an international research group dedicated to the study of religious differences, conflicts, and plurality in Europe during the early modern period. He is the liaison representative between this group and the Renaissance Society of American and one of the co-editors of its Routledge series.

 Villani teaches courses on Renaissance history, the Reformation, history of missionaries, and Mediterranean history, as well as the graduate seminar in History and Contemporary Theory.

Curriculum Vitae

Academia