Biography

Lana Martysheva specialises in Early Modern European History. She completed her PhD at the Sorbonne under the direction of Prof. Denis Crouzet. In 2018, she defended her thesis ‘Betting on the Heretic. The royalist prelates and the legitimation of Henri IV’. She investigated the end of the French Wars of Religion from a new perspective that focused on a little-known, but politically crucial group of prelates. Her thesis revealed the mechanisms of their work of legitimation of the first Bourbon and demonstrated how the survival of the monarchy depended on the collective and individual efforts of multiple actors, too often left in the shadow of the King.

Her research interests are in Early Modern cultural, political and religious history. During her fellowship, she will be working on the new research project ‘The French Wars of Religion through the Prism of the Italian Peninsula’. She will explore the transnational dimensions of a mainly domestic French crisis (1559-1598) through the study of information. The comparative analysis of three States (Florence, Milan, and Rome) will allow the identification of the fundamental processes at work in the transfer of information with which this project is concerned, whilst allowing close study of the specificities, dependent on different practices of government and social organisation.

At the Sorbonne, Aix-Marseille University and Sciences Po, she has taught undergraduate seminars and given lectures in Early Modern French and European History, Methodology of History, History of the world (15th-19th centuries) and Twentieth Century History of Europe and Asia.