Lisa Lillie

Biography

Lisa Lillie is a social historian of early modern Europe and the Mediterranean, with a particular focus on Renaissance and early modern Tuscany. She is interested in maritime history and the commercial and social lives of pirates, merchants, and the enslaved. Her manuscript-in-progress, The Medici and the Middle Sea: Piracy, Slavery, and Commerce in Early Modern Tuscany, 1537-1737, demonstrates how the Medici transformed the port of Livorno into one of the Mediterranean’s foremost auction houses for goods, ships, and peoples seized through corsairing and piracy, making slavery and commerce twin cornerstones of an emerging Tuscan empire. She has taught courses on the global history of piracy, the Medici and Renaissance Europe, and early modern empires.

Professor Lillie’s research has been funded by the Mellon Foundation, the American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies, and the Joint Center for History and Economics at Harvard University & the University of Cambridge. She has lived and worked in Tuscany and France, holding appointments at the Galileo Museum in Florence and the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris.