Daniel O'Driscoll

Research Topic

Crime and Governance in the Spanish and Portuguese Empires, 1580-1700

Supervisor: Professor Giuseppe Marcocci 

My primary interests lie in the social and political significance of crime in the early modern world, especially in borderlands of the Iberian empires of Spain and Portugal in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I focus on accounts of armed groups including highwaymen, slave-hunters and indigenous and 'maroon' raiders, examining their encounters with both colonial authorities and indigenous peoples. My doctoral thesis uses sources from archives in Spain, Portugal, Italy and the Americas to examine the overlooked role of these groups as both collaborators and foils for colonial empire, and the far-reaching consequences that the intersection of formal and informal power could have.

My research is generously funded by the Oxford-David Jones Graduate Scholarship in History and Jesus College, Oxford. It has also been supported by fellowships at the Huntington Library, the Instituto Valencia de Don Juan, Madrid, and the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley. 

I graduated with a BA in History and Modern Languages from Jesus College, Oxford (2020), and I then completed an MSt in Global and Imperial History at University College, Oxford (2021).

I am a co-convenor of the Oxford Iberian History Seminar.

Teaching:

I am currently a Retained Lecturer at Exeter College Oxford. I work part-time for the History Faculty as a Graduate Outreach Tutor, and Researcher in Residence at a local state secondary school, aiming to improve student access to studying History at Oxford.

I teach the following undergraduate papers:

I am also a Visiting Lecturer in History at the University of Roehampton, teaching papers in early modern and global and imperial history.