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.

I am currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow 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, and an Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Research Interests

• Early modern history of science

• History of religion

• Natural and environmental history

• History of the body, slavery, and race-making in the Enlightenment

• European and Atlantic history

My research currently focuses on three projects.

The first centres on the interplay between natural science and religion in the Enlightenment. My writings in this area range from the evolution of Swedish climactic science (Etudes Germaniques, 2021) to debates over African superiority, the political economy of colonization, and slavery (Intellectual History Review, 2023). My upcoming research explores the sources of Linnean human taxonomy.

I am also working on a new biography of the Swedish parliamentarian, philosopher and mystic theologian Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) exploring his lifelong obsession with the soul-body problem. I have written about various aspects of Swedenborg's life and thought, and I have a broader interest in currents related to his ideas and posterity.

My third project is the early modern history of the plurality of worlds. I am interested in the links between astronomy, the afterlife, and extra-terrestrialism (Annals of Science, 2020). I recently published a popular blogpost about early modern views of life on other planets (Voltaire Foundation, 2023).

Contact

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

Enslaved by African angels: Swedenborg on African superiority, evangelization, and slavery (April 2023)

This article provides the first extensive study of Emanuel Swedenborg’s (1688–1772) views on Africans and slavery. Although significant scholarship has been devoted to Swedenborg’s influence on the British abolitionist movement in the 1780s-1790s, comparably little has been written on the ideas and context which inspired this influence in the first place. This article explores Swedenborg’s ties to networks and debates about African evangelization, colonization, and slavery during the neglected period of the Swedish Age of Liberty (1719–1772).

'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.

Dr Vincent Roy-Di Piazza

Featured Publications

Enslaved by African angels: Swedenborg on African superiority, evangelization, and slavery (April 2023)

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

Research Centres

Publications