Profile
Liam Brockey is a historian of Early Modern Europe. His primary area of interest is the history of Southern Europe, with a focus on Portugal, its overseas empire, and the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits). Professor Brockey’s first book is Journey to the East: The Jesuit Mission to China, 1579-1724 (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007). More broadly, his interests include the history of southern Europe, the history of early modern Catholicism, the development of Maritime Asia, and the European presence in Asia in the early modern period. Professor Brockey’s articles have appeared in the Journal of Early Modern History, Itinerario, Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, Monumenta Serica, and the Journal of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His essays have been published by the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune, as well as on the History News Network.
Liam Brockey earned his B.A. from the University of Notre Dame (1994) and his A.M. and Ph.D. in history from Brown University (2002). He has been a two-time recipient of grants from the J. William Fulbright Foundation (for study in Portugal and Italy) and has received several fellowships from the Luso-American Foundation in Lisbon, Portugal.
Current Project
Professor Brockey is currently working on a study of the intersection of religious life and city life in sixteenth-century Lisbon. He has spent the past year working in the archives in Portugal to accomplish this project and looks forward to writing this new book in the coming months. Liam Brockey has also devoted time to editing a volume entitled Portuguese Colonial Cities in the Early Modern World which will be published by Ashgate Publishers in the coming months. He is also in the process of developing two other projects: a study of the worldwide communications network centered on the city of Évora, Portugal, with particular focus on the figure of Manuel Severim de Faria (1583-1655); and an analysis of Jesuit administration across Asia in the early seventeenth century which highlights the career and travels of missions inspector André Palmeiro (1569-1635).
Teaching Interests
Professor Brockey’s courses at Princeton have included a survey course of early modern Europe; undergraduate seminars on early modern Catholicism and on encounters in the “first age of globalization”; and a graduate seminar on the history and historiography of early modern Europe.