- Assistant Professor, Research Stream
- francesco.morriello@utoronto.ca
- Odette Hall 020
Francesco A. Morriello is an Assistant Professor in Book and Media Studies at St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Cambridge, a specialized MTS in religion from Harvard University, and a BA in English Literature from York University. His research examines culture in the modern world (c. 15th to 21st centuries), with a focus on the history of print, media, divination, and religious practices in Europe and the Americas. He is interested in how these cultural aspects have evolved over time, especially amid advances in technology and periods of major sociopolitical change, such as war and revolution.
In 2024, he was awarded a Fellowship by the Royal Historical Society in London in recognition of his original contribution to historical scholarship with the publication of his first book, Messengers of Empire: Print and Revolution in the Atlantic World (Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment: 2023). The book analyzes how the French Revolutionary Wars shaped the production and circulation of information in the British and French Atlantic world among different social groups, such as printers, merchants, government officials, secret societies, and more. Messengers of Empire was shortlisted for the Literary Encyclopedia Book Prize 2024.
Professor Morriello is the recipient of numerous research grants and awards including those from the Society for Nautical Research, the Prince Consort & Thirlwall Fund, the Lightfoot Fund for Ecclesiastical Research, and the History Project which is organized by the Joint Center for History and Economics at Cambridge and Harvard Universities. In 2014, he received the Barry Bloomfield Award from the Bibliographical Society in London for his research on early modern almanacs, astrology charts, newspapers, books, and communication patterns. In 2015, he was awarded a research fellowship at the John Carter Brown Library in Providence, RI. His research has taken him to over 20 archives and libraries around the world, including the National Archives UK, the Archives nationales d’outre-mer, and the Vatican Secret Archive, among many others.
He is currently at work on two book projects. The first focuses on the history of fortune telling from the ancient world to the present day, revealing how this cultural practice adapted to the latest media technology in order to survive the ravages of plague, revolution, and war. The second book provides an innovative examination of how strict censorship laws and surveillance practices compelled people in Luso-Spanish speaking areas in South America to find alternative means to consume and spread information during the revolutionary and post-revolutionary periods of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Website: https://www.famorriello.com/
Areas of Expertise
• 15th-21st century print and reading culture in Europe and the Americas
• Books, newspapers, almanacs, magazines, pamphlets, broadsheets, censorship
• History of the novel
• History of media
• Radio, television, film, Internet, social media, AI, advertising
• Atlantic world
• Age of Sail, Age of Revolution, Enlightenment, communications, postal systems, colonialism, maritime studies
• Cultural practices
• Divination, astrology, magic, occultism, mysticism
• Religious history
• World religions, rituals, Catholic and Protestant missions
Publications
Books
Messengers of Empire: Print and Revolution in the Atlantic World (Liverpool University Press: Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, 2023).
Book Chapters
“The Printing Press and Colonial Newspapers in the Lesser Antilles” in James Raven (ed.), Global Exchanges of Knowledge in the Long Eighteenth Century: Ideas and Materialities c. 1650–1850 (Boydell & Brewer Press, 2024).
Articles
“Colonial Printers in the British, French, and Spanish Caribbean, c. 1780 – 1830,” Journal of Modern Intellectual History (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2025). (By invitation).
“Eighteenth-Century Literary Culture in the French Antilles,” The Literary Encyclopedia, Volume 1.5.2.04: French Writing and Culture: Eighteenth-Century and the Enlightenment, 1700-1800 (2021).
Presentations
“From Three Months to Three Seconds: The Evolution of Mail Delivery from the Renaissance to the Present Day” Winton M. Blount Postal History Symposium, The National Postal Museum, The Smithsonian Institution (Washington D.C.), 8 December 2022.
“Race, Identity, and Imperial Communications: Slave Couriers and the Postal System in the French Atlantic World, 1794–1802,” 132nd Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, (Washington D.C.), 6 January 2018.
“Catholic Missionaries and Rituals of Marriage and Family Reproduction in the French Caribbean, c. 1756 – 1802,” American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, (Boston, MA), 20 November 2017.
“Finding Faith: A Methodological Analysis of Modes of Categorization in the Vatican Secret Archives,” Enabling Constraints: A Symposium on the Demands of Frameworks and Data in the Study of Religion, University of Toronto, (Toronto, ON), 28 April 2017.
“The Movement of Information: Print Culture in the 18th Century British and French West Indies” Fellow’s Talk Series, John Carter Brown Library, Brown University (Providence, RI), 29 April 2015.
“Communication Networks between St. Domingue and Jamaica during the Haitian Revolution, 1791-1804,” Conference of the Society for Caribbean Studies UK, University of Oxford (Oxford, UK), 6 July 2012.
“The Flow of Revolutionary News: An Analysis of Communication Networks between St. Domingue and Martinique,” ConIH graduate conference on International History: Mobilities, Flows, and Networks in Global History, Harvard University, (Cambridge, MA), 10 March 2011.
“Revolutionary Communication Patterns Across the French Atlantic and the Caribbean,” Consortium on the Revolutionary Era, 1750 – 1850, (Tallahassee, FL), 5 March 2011.
“Healthy Confrontations: Medicine as a Promoter of Literacy in Columbian Hispaniola,” Atlantic World Literacies Conference, University of North Carolina at Greensboro (Greensboro, NC), 8 October 2010.