Description of research and teaching

Dr Eva Johanna Holmberg (she/her), FRHistS, is a University Researcher in the Department of Philosophy, History, and Art Studies at the University of Helsinki and a senior researcher of the Academy of Finland research project Experiencing Agony: Pain and Embodiment in the British Atlantic World, 1600–1900 (2022-26). In this project she will focus on the pain, injuries, and discomforts of mobile English people, following their suffering footsteps to the Atlantic world and early Virginia colony. She is also kicking off a new major research project on the embodied experiences of British early colonialism, trade, and long-distance travel in the 'long seventeenth century'.

Holmberg's research interests include renaissance cross-cultural encounters, early modern race-making, Anglo-Ottoman exchanges, and the cultural history of mobility – including its bodily, sensory and emotional experiences. She is the author of three books. Her first monograph explored contemporary Jews in early modern English imagination, Jews in the Early Modern English Imagination: A Scattered Nation (Ashgate, 2012, nowadays available from Routledge). Her second book, British Encounters with Ottoman Minorities in the Early Seventeenth Century: 'Slaves' of the Sultan, was published by Palgrave in 2022 in the series Early Modern Cultural Studies, 1500-1700, edited by Jean Howard and Holly Dugan. You can watch the book launch here. Her third book, entitled Writing Mobile Lives, 1500-1700 (2024) is an open access Cambridge Element in Travel Writing and can be downloaded here.

Holmberg has edited a theme issue for Renaissance Studies, 'Renaissance and Early Modern Travel: Practice and Experience, 1500-1700' (Renaissance Studies vol. 33, no. 4., 2019). Her articles have appeared in Huntington Library Quarterly, Cultural & Social History, Renaissance Studies, Studies in Travel Writing, and several edited collections and handbooks. She is currently editing (together with Sara Norja and Kirsty Rolfe) Richard Norwood's (1590-1675) 'Confessions' for the Hakluyt Society. Norwood's 'Confessions' is a fascinating spiritual autobiography of an early modern mariner, mathematics teacher and a land surveyor of Bermuda. The new edition will reveal exciting aspects of Norwood's manuscript for the very first time, that have until now been hidden under ink smudges. A recent article in the Huntington Library Quarterly explores the entanglements of travel and life writing in Norwood's manuscript.

Holmberg is a Trustee and a council member of the Hakluyt Society and a co-convener of the longstanding Institute of Historical Research seminar, Society, Culture, and Belief, 1500-1800. She has held research fellowships at Birkbeck, QMUL, NYU Medieval and Renaissance Center (MARC), Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies (Core Fellow in 2013-2016), and University of Sussex. From 2016 to 2022 Holmberg was an Academy of Finland Research Fellow after receiving a major five-year mid-career research grant from the Academy of Finland. Her project focused on the entanglements of manuscript travel writing and life writing in seventeenth-century Britain, and has yielded several peer-reviewed publications.

Holmberg has taught at the University of Turku, Queen Mary University of London, and University of Helsinki, where her courses have focused on early modern cultural history, history of emotions and senses, cross-cultural encounters and travel, and historiography and methodology of cultural history.

Holmberg is a member of the AHRC-funded research collective Medieval and Early Modern Orients, a decolonial project that seeks to further knowledge and understanding of the early interactions between England and the Islamic Worlds. https://memorients.com She can also be found on BlueSky with the handle @evajohannaholmberg.bsky.social