Dr Eva Johanna HolmbergAcademy of Finland Research Fellow, Visiting FellowEmail: e.j.holmberg@qmul.ac.ukProfileResearchPublicationsProfileA graduate of the oldest dedicated department of cultural history in the world, at the University of Turku, my first monograph explored contemporary Jews in early modern English experience and imagination (Jews in the Early Modern English Imagination, Ashgate, 2012). My interest in early modern travellers has led to fruitful stays at Birkbeck, QMUL, and NYU. From 2013-16, I held a fellowship at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies and taught at the University of Helsinki. This period covered the preparation of my forthcoming second monograph on 17th century English travellers to the Ottoman Empire and their descriptions of non-Muslim peoples. I have taught at the University of Turku, QMUL and University of Helsinki. I am co-convenor of the IHR seminar, Society, Culture and Belief, 1500-1800.ResearchResearch Interests: In broad terms, I am a cultural historian of early modern Britain and the wider world but the centre of my interest lies in cross-cultural encounters and the cultural history of travel, including the history of the body, emotions, senses, and early modern travel writing itself as a composite genre. I am delighted to continue my association with QMUL, now as the holder of a five-year research grant from the Academy of Finland. The current project Travel and Self-Description in Seventeenth-Century England will investigate the multiple ways in which travel accounts carry traces of the aims and emotions of their authors and of their efforts at self-description and life accounting. The individual case studies will look at both manuscript and printed travel accounts and writings from different social classes, ranging from merchants and diplomats to elite and aristocratic travellers. I will be happy to talk to postgraduate students who share research interests with me. early modern cultural and social history, cultural encounters and exchanges, history of travel Christian-Muslim relations Jewish history life writing and self-narratives Publications Selected publications Books: In progress: Perceiving Levantines: British Cultural Descriptions of the Ottoman Empire and its Non-Muslim Peoples, 1580-1640. Jews in the Early Modern English Imagination. A Scattered Nation (link is external). Ashgate Publishing, Aldershot 2012 (174p.) Edited collections: ’Renaissance and Early Modern Travel: Practice and Experience, 1500-1700’, a theme issue in progress for Renaissance Studies. ’Shaping Strangers in Early Modern English Travel Writing’ (link is external) (with Chloë Houston). Journeys - The International Journal of Travel and Travel Writing, Vol. 14, no. 2, 2013. Articles and book chapters: ’Writing the Travelling Self: Travel and Life Writing in Peter Mundy's (1597-1667) Itinerarium Mundii’ (link is external), Renaissance Studies, first view. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/rest.12250/abstract (link is external) ’Timberlake, Henry, d. 1625/6’ (link is external), in Christian-Muslim Relations: A Bibliographical History, edited by David Thomas & John Chesworth. Brill, Leiden & Boston, 2016, pp. 137-140. ’Lithgow, William, d. 1645’ (link is external), in Christian-Muslim Relations: A Bibliographical History, edited by David Thomas & John Chesworth. Brill, Leiden & Boston, 2016, pp. 230-236. ’The Middle East’ (link is external), in Routledge Companion to Travel Writing, edited by Carl Thompson. Routledge, London & New York, 2016, pp. 372-383. ’Writing the Travel Companion in the Seventeenth-Century English Texts about the Ottoman Empire’ (link is external), in Early Modern Exchanges. Dialogues Between Nations and Cultures, 1550-1750, edited by Helen Hackett. Ashgate Publishing, Aldershot 2015, pp. 183-199. ‘Jews of all Trades in Early Modern English Travel Writing.’ (link is external) Journeys – The International Journal of Travel and Travel Writing, Vol. 14, no. 2, 2013, pp. 27-49. ‘In the Company of Franks: British Identifications in the Ottoman Empire, c. 1600.’ (link is external) Studies in Travel Writing, Vol. 14, issue 4, 2012, pp. 363-374. ‘An Ottoman City of Strangers: Placing the Jews in Early Modern English Texts on Istanbul.’ (link is external) Città e Storia, Vol. 7, issue 1-2 (gennaio-giugno), 2012. Special issue: Tales of the City: Outsiders Descriptions of Cities in the Early Modern Period, ed. Flaminia Bardati, Fabrizio Nevola & Eva Renzulli, pp. 117-134.