Felipe Fernandez-Armesto
William P. Reynolds Professor of History
Field
Modern European History
Profile
Felipe Fernandez-Armesto joined Notre Dame in 2009, after occupying chairs at Tufts University and the University of London (Queen Mary College). He spent most of his career teaching at Oxford, where he was and undergraduate and doctoral student. He has had visiting appointments at many universities and research institutes in Europe and the Americas, and has honorary doctorates from la Trobe University and the Universidad de los Andes. Among other distinctions, he has won the John Carter Brown Medal, the Caird Medal of the National Maritime Museum (UK), the Premio Nacional a Investigacion of the Sociedad Geografica Espanola, Soain's Premio Nacional de Grastonomia for his history of food, ant the Tercentenary Medal of the Society of Antiquaries of London.
Teaching Interests
Spanish history and the history of late medieval and early modern colonial societies, with some special attention to cartography, maritime subjects, exploration, and cultural exchanges. In recent years, he has made contributions to global history, understood as the study of genuinely global experiences, and to environmental history, especially on a global scale. He now works on the history of cultural organisms - trying to fit human and non-human cultural creatures, especially apes, into a single frame refrence.
Current Projects
Presentor of the Schouler Lectures at Johns Hopkins University in 2010 on early modern slave creole languages.
Among works in the press and in course of appearing are a series of classic studies of medieval colonial expansion (jointly edited with james Muldoon), and a vulgarization about the year 1492 in global history.
Contributing editor of the University of Chicago Press History of Cartography.
Editorial consultant for many journals and collaborative projects, including Comaparative Studies in Society and History and the Journal of Global History.
Working on a project with a team based at the Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, to bring archaeological, paleoathropological, linguistic, and primatological knowledge to the writing of global history in the very long run.
Recent Publications
'Global Histories of Food' (review article), Journal of Global History, iii, 459-62, 2008.
'The Portuguese Empire in Global Context, c. 1400-c. 1800' in F. Bethencourt and D. Curto , eds., The Portuguese Empire (Cambridge, Cambridge U.P., 2007).
The World: a Brief History (Upper Saddle River, Prentice Hall, 2007).
'Revoluciones atlanticas: consecuencias en los ambitos anglosajon e hispano, in G. Anes and E. Garrigues, eds., La ilustracion espanola y la independencia de los Estados Unidos (Madrid, Real Academia de la Historia), pp. 181-198, 2007.
Amerigo: the Man Who Gave his Name to America (New York, Random House, 2007).
'Maps and Exploration in the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries', in D. Woodward, ed., History of Cartography, iii, part I (Chicago, University of Chicago P.), pp. 738-73, 2007.
"Britain, the Sea, the Empire, the World', in D. Cannadine, ed., Empire, the Sea and Global History (London, Palgrave), pp.621, 2007.
Contact
Office: 449 Decio Hall (Fall Semester)
Office: 402 Notre Dame London Centre (Spring Semester)
Email: Felipe.Fernandez-Armesto@nd.edu