Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences
Netherlands
fellow
Megan Williams
2022-2023
Home institution
University of Groningen
Country of origin (home institution)
Netherlands
Discipline(s)
History of science and technology
Medieval history
Theme(s)
Democracy, Citizenship, Governance
Globalization
Information & media
Fellowship dates
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Biography
Dr. Megan K. Williams is Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. She received her PhD from Columbia University in 2009 for her work on mobility regimes in sixteenth-century diplomacy. This paper is inspired by her current research project, which is funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), and which examines paper’s role in the transformation of Renaissance diplomacy, ca. 1460-1560. Her recent publications (http://paperprinces.org) focus on paper as artifact of late medieval and early modern statecraft.
Research Project
Unfolding the Place of Paper in Renaissance Diplomacy and Statecraft
What impact did the late medieval spread of paper have on Eurasian diplomatic practices, ca.1460-1560?
Europe saw a significant shift from largely-oral to largely-written diplomacy ca.1460-1560. This shift is usually ascribed to emerging states’ security concerns. The new reporting practices so pivotal to this early modern diplomatic shift, however, presupposed a contemporaneous development in political communications and political knowledge-management which scholars have long taken for granted: the growing availability of paper. My project traces how this relatively-new material communications technology shaped diplomacy, political communications, and governance in a crucial period of Eurasian political change. Today we take for granted many habits of thinking about, ordering, and using information which have their roots in early modern paper-borne information management. The matter of media mattered in the past, and matters still today.
Research Interests:
diplomatic history; material culture; information technologies