Dr Vincent Roy-Di Piazza

Postdoctoral Researcher

Linacre College

vincent.roy-dipiazza@linacre.ox.ac.uk

I am a historian of science, religion, and political economy. I recently obtained my DPhil at Oxford (2022) in history of science, medicine, economic and social history, and subsequently worked as an AHRC funded postdoctoral research fellow at Oxford.

I am currently an associate postdoctoral researcher at Linacre College, Oxford, a lecturer at Stockholm University, and an associate fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Research Interests

• History of science, medicine, and religion (1500-1900)

• Natural science and environmental history

• History of the body, race, and sexuality

• History of political economy, colonialism, and slavery

• History of literature and satire

• European, Atlantic, and Nordic history

My research currently focuses on three main projects:

• The first centres on the interplay between natural science, political economy, and religion in the long Enlightenment period. My writings in this area range from the evolution of Swedish climactic science in times of war (Etudes Germaniques, 2021) and debates over African superiority, colonization, and slavery (Intellectual History Review, 2023), to the history of entomology, sexuality, and religion (Revue de Synthèse, 2024). My latest research focuses on a new history of Linnean human taxonomy, bringing together history of medicine, natural science, and political economy.

• Based on my doctoral dissertation, I am also working on a new monograph about the Swedish parliamentarian, philosopher and mystic theologian Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) centered on his lifelong interest for the soul-body problem. I have written and lectured about various aspects of Swedenborg's life and thought, and I have a broader interest in currents related to his ideas and posterity.

• My third project centres on the history of astronomy and literature. I am interested in the links between cosmology, the afterlife, and the plurality of worlds (Annals of Science, 2020), extending to the history of literature, travelogues, and satire. My first article on the subject has become one of the most-read published in the Annals of Science, and you can read more about this research on my latest popular blogpost (Voltaire Foundation, 2023).

Contact

You can find out more about my research on my Personal webpage and reach out via X/Twitter: @RoyDiPiazza

Enslaved by African angels: Swedenborg on African superiority, evangelization, and slavery (April 2023)

This article provides the first extensive study of Emanuel Swedenborg’s (1688–1772) views on Africans and slavery. Although significant scholarship has been devoted to Swedenborg’s influence on the British abolitionist movement in the 1780s-1790s, comparably little has been written on the ideas and context which inspired this influence in the first place. This article explores Swedenborg’s ties to networks and debates about African evangelization, colonization, and slavery during the neglected period of the Swedish Age of Liberty (1719–1772).

'Ghosts from other planets': plurality of worlds, afterlife and satire in Emanuel Swedenborg’s De Telluribus in mundo nostro solari (1758) (September 2020)

In 1758 in London, Swedish natural philosopher and mystic theologian Emanuel Swedenborg published De Telluribus in Mundo nostro Solari (Earths in our solar system), a treatise on the plurality of worlds and life on other planets. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, these topics formed a heterogenous literary genre which encompassed theology, astronomy, philosophy and satire. In De Telluribus, Swedenborg made detailed claims of communication with extraterrestrial spirits in the afterlife, through which he sought to spread his theology to new audiences.

Dr Vincent Roy-Di Piazza

Featured Publications

Enslaved by African angels: Swedenborg on African superiority, evangelization, and slavery (April 2023)

'Ghosts from other planets': plurality of worlds, afterlife and satire in Emanuel Swedenborg’s De Telluribus in mundo nostro solari (1758) (September 2020)

Research Centres

Publications