Jennifer Mcfarland
- Researcher
I am a postdoctoral researcher on the project Travellers’ interactions in early modern Italy (TRAVEL), for which my research focuses on travellers in Naples. My broader research interests lie in histories of space and mobility, health and disability, and the material cultures of domestic and urban spaces.
Before joining ISIG, I completed my PhD at the University of Cambridge (2025). My doctoral research examined old age in seventeenth-century Venice and the Veneto, exploring how artisans and workers negotiated this life cycle stage and how old age affected city life. I completed my MA and BA (Hons) at the University of Melbourne, where my research focused on the social status, everyday lives and charitable roles of pizzochere (lay religious women) in sixteenth-century Venice (2020), and on visual and material aspects of relic cult (2017).
Related Projects
Publications
“Old age, urban space and mobility in seventeenth-century Italy”. Urban History (2026). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0963926826101047
“Banking on the hospital: Planning for old age at the Ospedale di San Lazzaro dei Mendicanti”. Longevità e gerontocrazia a Venezia (secoli XIII-XVIII), ed. Egidio Ivetic (Marsilio, forthcoming 2026)
“Ties that Unbind: Proximities, Pizzochere, and Women’s Social Options in Early Modern Venice.” I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance 24, 2 (2021): 241-267. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/716280
“Relics, reinvention, and reform in Renaissance Venice: Catherine of Siena’s stigmata at the Basilica dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo.” Renaissance Studies 34, 2 (2020): 278-302. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/rest.12607