Jennifer McFarland

Jen is a PhD candidate in History at the University of Cambridge. Her research interests focus on the social and cultural histories of early modern Venice, in particular charitable networks and poor relief especially for older people, and lay religious structures. Her doctoral research investigates how poorer, non-elite Venetians negotiated ageing in the early modern period, and is funded by the AHRC and the University of Cambridge. Taking into account both institutional and household or family settings, the project seeks to understand the place of and options available to older and poor working and artisan Venetians, how they understood and responded to their own ageing, and the effects of old age on everyday interactions in the city.
Before coming to Cambridge, Jen completed a BA (Honours) in History with a thesis on the Venetian relic cult of St Catherine of Siena (2017), and an MA by research on the social status, everyday lives and charitable roles of pizzochere (lay religious women) in sixteenth-century Venice (2020), both at the University of Melbourne. She was a 2019 Australasian Centre for Italian Studies (ACIS)–Save Venice Research Fellow, and is content editor for the ACIS-led digital humanities project Fashioning Isabella d’Este. Her research has been published in Renaissance Studies (2020), and I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance (forthcoming, 2021).