Dr Vincent Roy-Di Piazza

Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Humanities Division

Arts and Humanities Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow 2023

vincent.roy-dipiazza@humanities.ox.ac.uk

I am an early modern historian of science and religion, political economy, and the Northern World. I recently obtained my DPhil at Oxford (2022) in history of science, medicine, economic and social history.

In 2023, I am a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Oxford History Faculty, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Coucil. I am also the Hagströmer Fellow 2023 at the Hagströmer Library of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. I am an Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (elected Sept. 2022).

Research Interests

My research explores science and religion within global early modern networks, Scandinavian slavery, and body-politics during the Enlightenment period.

I am a specialist of the life and works of Swedish parliamentarian, philosopher and theologian Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) and have a broader interest in currents related to his ideas and posterity (millenarianism, abolitionism, environmental thought). My doctoral thesis, titled 'Homo Maximus: Emanuel Swedenborg and the interaction of soul and body' provided a new intellectual biography of Swedenborg centred on his lifelong interest for the soul-body problem within the debate's scientific, religious and socio-political contexts. My DPhil was fully funded by the British research council (AHRC-DTP), the Gilbert Ryle scholarship at Linacre College, and the inaugural SDS scholarship by the Swedenborg Society in London during four years (2018-2022).

I welcome enquiries to share my research, teach, and contribute to new projects.

Contact

You can find out more about my research on my Personal webpage and reach out via Twitter: @RoyDiPiazza

'Ghosts from other planets': plurality of worlds, afterlife and satire in Emanuel Swedenborg’s De Telluribus in mundo nostro solari (1758) (September 2020)

In 1758 in London, Swedish natural philosopher and mystic theologian Emanuel Swedenborg published De Telluribus in Mundo nostro Solari (Earths in our solar system), a treatise on the plurality of worlds and life on other planets. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, these topics formed a heterogenous literary genre which encompassed theology, astronomy, philosophy and satire. In De Telluribus, Swedenborg made detailed claims of communication with extraterrestrial spirits in the afterlife, through which he sought to spread his theology to new audiences.

Musis Borealibus : science boréale et discours sur le Nord, 1620-1720 (July 2021)

Le 30 novembre 1718, le roi de Suède Charles XII mourut sans héritier, abattu d’une balle dans la tête lors de la bataille du siège de Fredriksten. Nul ne sait si le coup fut tiré par l’ennemi dano-norvégien ou par l’un de ses propres soldats. La Suède était en ruines, l’économie dévastée, et l’autocratique Charles XII ne manquait ni de détracteurs ni d’ennemis dans son propre royaume. Le siège de Fredriksten précipita la fin de la Grande Guerre du Nord (1700-1721) et de la Suède carolinienne.

Dr Vincent Roy-Di Piazza

Featured Publications

'Ghosts from other planets': plurality of worlds, afterlife and satire in Emanuel Swedenborg’s De Telluribus in mundo nostro solari (1758) (September 2020)

Musis Borealibus : science boréale et discours sur le Nord, 1620-1720 (July 2021)

Research Centres