Hi, welcome to my website!
I am a historian of science and philosophy in the early modern period, with a focus on the eighteenth century.
I work as a postdoc at the Université libre de Bruxelles in the framework of the EOS project RENEW18. After completing my PhD at the École Normale Supérieure of Paris and the University of Bologna in 2018, I have been a postdoc at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice in the framework of the ERC project Early Modern Cosmology (2019-20), and a postdoc at the University of Neuchâtel in the framework of the SNSF project Mesure du temps, chimie et cuisine (2020-23).
My research focuses on two main areas. As an intellectual historian, I study the circulation of knowledge in the early French Enlightenment, eighteenth-century controversies on natural philosophy – particularly those originated by the diffusion of Newtonian theories in Europe – and the history of scientific academies. As a historian of scientific practice and of material culture, I am interested in the birth of an experimental culture in the early modern age, the knowledge embedded in object construction and use, and scientific practice in the household.
To find out more about my research, you might read this page.
- News -
My paper Resisting Newton in Provincial France, 1750s-1770s: Opposition from the Margins to the Parisian Academic Community has just been accepted for publication in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science.
Simone Guidi (CNR Rome), Ludovica Marinucci (CNR Rome) and I have signed a contract with Springer (collection Studies in History and Philosophy of Science) for the edited volume Reassessing the “Scientific Revolution”: Key Concepts and New Case Studies. The book will be published in 2025.
On 17 April 2024, I have participated in the radio show Le cours de l’histoire, on France Culture, to talk about the history of fire, with Olivier Jandot (historian) and Xavier Mauduit (host). You can find the podcast here.
Early Modern Fire
Science, Technology, and the Urban Space
Edited by Gianenrico Bernasconi and Marco Storni
(Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2024)
Abstract: Early Modern Fire offers new perspectives on the history of fire in early modern Europe (ca. 1600–1800). Far from the background role that scholarship has traditionally assigned to fire, the essays in this volume demonstrate its centrality to understanding the entangled histories of science, technology, and society in the pre-industrial period.
Analysing case studies ranging from alchemy to cooking and from firefighting to fireworks, the contributors show that the history of fire is not only one of change and progress, but also of continuity, characterised by the persistence of traditional know-how, small-scale innovation, and the coexistence of different paradigms.
Contributors: Gianenrico Bernasconi, Catherine Denys, Hannah Elmer, Liliane Hilaire-Pérez, Olivier Jandot, Cyril Lacheze, Andrew M.A. Morris, Cornelia Müller, Bérengère Pinaud, Stefano Salvia, Marco Storni, Marie Thébaud-Sorger, and Simon Werrett.
You can order the book here.
GoogleBooks link.
I was generously awarded a prize (“prix d’encouragement à la création littéraire”) by the Fondation Simone et Cino Del Duca-Institut de France for my book on Maupertuis.
In this video, filmed at the Foundation, I discuss my research with Morgane Le Roy (librarian at the Institut de France) and Kaouther Adimi (another prizewinner).
Maupertuis
Le philosophe, l’académicien, le polemiste
(Paris: Honoré Champion, 2022)
Prix de la Fondation Del Duca-Institut de France 2023
Abstract: Aujourd’hui presque oublié, Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698-1759) est pourtant une figure majeure de la vie intellectuelle et institutionnelle du siècle des Lumières. Cet ouvrage se propose de renouveler l’image du savant en approfondissant certains aspects saillants de sa vie et de son œuvre, et de lui restituer ainsi la place qu’il mérite dans l’histoire de son siècle. Il s’agit notamment d’interroger la genèse et l’évolution de sa pensée philosophique, en dévoilant l’originalité de son épistémologie et de sa métaphysique. L’identité du « Maupertuis philosophe » se construit en parallèle avec celle de l’« académicien » et du « polémiste ». C’est pourquoi ce volume consacre aussi un large espace à l’étude des milieux académiques où Maupertuis travailla, à Paris comme à Berlin, ainsi qu’aux controverses auxquelles il prit part.
Reviews: Centaurus (O. Matei); Physis (P. D. Omodeo); Dix-huitième siècle (A. Carcreff); Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies (E. H. Barnet); Acta Fabula (J.-C. Bourdin); French Studies (A. Thompson); Journal of Early Modern Studies (S. Milancovici).
