Dr Francois Soyer
Senior Lecturer - School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
Biography
After completing my PhD at the University of Cambridge in 2007, I was awarded a Leverhulme Trust Study Abroad Studentship that enabled me to conduct two years of postdoctoral research in the archives of the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal. In September 2008 I was appointed as a lecturer and then as an Associate Professor at the University of Southampton and between 2012 and 2015 I held an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Centre for the History of Emotions in the University of Adelaide. Since January 2018, I have been working as a Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of New England in Australia.
Qualifications
2011: Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice (University of Southampton)
2007: PhD in History (University of Cambridge)
2003: MPhil in History (University of Cambridge)
2002: MA Honours (University of St. Andrews)
Teaching Areas
I teach a range of courses on the history of Europe and the European colonial empires between c.1450 and 1800.
Research Interests
My research focuses particularly on the history of anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic propaganda in early modern Europe in general and the Iberian world in particular. I also work on the history of the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions. I have completed a book on anti-Semitic conspiracy theories in the early modern Iberian world and I am currently working on a project tracing the origins, development and impact of the Blood Libel legend in Spain, focusing especially on the Blood Libel cases of San Dominguito de Val and the Holy Child of La Guardia. My other research interests include the history of gender and sexuality in the early modern Iberian World and the history of the censorship of art in the early modern Hispanic world. I am currently writing a short book on the life and trial of Maria Duran, a Catalan woman, cross-dresser and lesbian who was arrested and prosecuted by the Portuguese Inquisition in 1741-1744.
Research Supervision Experience
I have supervised MA and PhD students in late medieval and early modern history.
Publications
Books
Soyer, F. (2014). Popularizing anti-semitism in early modern Spain and its empire. Francisco de Torrejoncillo and the Centinela contra Judíos (1674). (The Medieval and Early Modern Iberian World; No. 54). Leiden, NL: Brill.
Soyer, F. (2013). A Perseguição aos Judeus e Muçulmanos de Portugal - D. Manuel I e o Fim da Tolerância Religiosa (1496-1497). (Lugar da História). Edições 70.
Soyer, F. (2012). Ambiguous gender in early modern Spain and Portugal: inquisitors, doctors and the transgression of gender norms. (The Medieval and Early Modern Iberian World; Vol. 47). Leiden, NL: Brill Academic Publishers.
Soyer, F. (2007). The Persecution of the Jews and Muslims of Portugal. King Manuel I and the End of Religious Tolerance (1496-7). (The Medieval Mediterranean; Vol. 69). Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill.
Articles and Book Chapters
Soyer, F (2018). The Inquisition and the Repression of Erotic and Pornographic Imagery in Early Nineteenth-Century Madrid, History: The Journal of the Historical Association, Volume 103, Issue 354 (2018), pp. 60-81. DOI: 10.1111/1468-229X.12545.
Soyer, F. (2017). The Passion of Christ in the Church of San Cristóbal de Rapaz: an example of medieval anti-Jewish iconography in colonial Peru? eHumanista/Conversos. Journal of Iberian Studies, 5, 392-416.
Soyer, F. (2017). Ritualised public performance, emotional narratives and the enactment of power: The public baptism of a Muslim in Eighteenth-Century Barcelona. In K. Barclay, & M. Bailey (Eds.), Emotion, Ritual and Power in Europe, 1200-1920: Family, State and Church (pp. 103-121). (Palgrave Studies in the History of Emotions). London: Palgrave/Macmillan. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-44185-6
Soyer, F. (2016). “All one in Christ Jesus”? Spiritual closeness, genealogical determinism and the conversion of Jews in Alonso de Espina’s Fortalitium Fidei. Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, 17(3), 239-254. DOI: 10.1080/14636204.2016.1201342 Soyer, F. (2016). The recycling of an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory into an anti-Morisco one in Early Modern Spain: the myth of El Vengador, the serial-killer doctor. eHumanista/Conversos. Journal of Iberian Studies, 4, 233-255.
Memberships
Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (United Kingdom). Honorary Fellow of the Parkes Institute for Jewish/non-Jewish relations (University of Southampton, United Kingdom).
