On May 13, Caroline E. Murphy joined me to discuss the juridic origins of water management in early modern Tuscany, and the use of water infrastructure as a means towards territorial control. You can listen to the show here. Caroline describes her recent experience conducting research in Florence, Italy before the pandemic, and reflects on how her process has shifted now that she is back home in Toronto. We had a chance to talk for a hour or so a few days before this interview was recorded, and there were so many more topics to cover! It was nice to reconnect with Caroline, who no longer lives in Cambridge, and dive into the world of her work. An archive full of hand-written documents penned with a quill in a language I hardly know sounds incredibly intimidating; Caroline takes the challenge in stride.

Caroline E. Murphy is a PhD candidate in the History, Theory, and Criticism of Architecture and Art program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as a doctoral fellow at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz in the department of Dr. Gerhard Wolf. Her research examines links between large infrastructure projects, environmental planning, and political economy in late Renaissance Italy, with a current focus on the design of the aqueous landscape in grand ducal Tuscany during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Secondary interests include the visual and material culture of religious antiquarianism in Reformation and Counter-Reformation Europe, and the historiography of the discipline of Renaissance studies. Her research has been supported by the MIT’s Walter A. Rosenblith Presidential Fellowship, Department of Architecture, and Science and Technology Initiatives, as well as by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. She holds a SMArchS degree from MIT, and a BA from the University of Toronto.