Caroline Murphy

Caroline Murphy is Clarence H. Blackall Career Development Assistant Professor in the Department of Architecture’s History, Theory, and Criticism Group at MIT. Her research and teaching explore the interconnected material and intellectual histories of architecture, environmental management, state administration, and political economy in early modern Europe, with a focus on the Italian peninsula and its global contact zones in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 

Her current book project, Forged in Flood: Rivers and the Design of Territory in Late Renaissance Italy, charts a history of alluvial management and planning in Tuscany during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, a time of immense environmental and hydrological volatility marked by frequent and severe flooding. Based on her 2023 dissertation, which was awarded the Alan Reinerman Prize for Best Unpublished Manuscript in Italian History from the Society for Italian Historical Studies, an affiliate society of the American Historical Association, it examines how architects, engineers, natural philosophers, and politicians within and beyond the Medicean state sought to transform its landscapes of unruly rivers into viable communication infrastructures, both to mitigate flood disasters and partake of the fruits of early globalization. She has articles and essays published in Land, Air, Sea: Architecture and Environment in the Early Modern Era (Brill, 2024), and under review for special issues of Renaissance Quarterly and Oxford Art Journal. Another ongoing project explores tensions between commerce, universalism, and religious and ethnic difference in the geographical and political-economic writings of Giovanni Botero. 

Caroline’s work has been supported by fellowships from MIT, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts, the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max Planck Institut, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Before joining the faculty at MIT, she worked at Villanova University as an Assistant Professor in the Department of History. She holds a PhD and SMArchS in History, Theory, and Criticism of Architecture and Art from MIT, and a BA from the University of Toronto.