Kate Lowe

Professor Kate Lowe is an Emeritus academic at Queen Mary University of London, holding the title of Professor of Renaissance History and Culture, and co-director of the Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies (CREMS). She has taught at prestigious institutions including the Universities of Hong Kong, London, Cambridge, Birmingham, and Chapel Hill. Her academic career includes research fellowships at Harvard University’s I Tatti Centre, the National Humanities Centre (US), and the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies.

Education: She earned her BA in History from Bedford College, University of London, and a PhD in Combined Historical Studies from the Warburg Institute, University of London.

Research focuses on fifteenth/sixteenth-century Italy, Renaissance Portugal, and the African presence in Southern Europe. She explores interdisciplinary topics like material/visual culture and gender in early modern contexts. Current projects include studying sub-Saharan Africans in Europe (1440–1650) and the intellectual journey of historian Nicolai Rubinstein. She also examines cultural links between Portugal and Italy, and the role of convents in preserving historical narratives.

Notable awards include the Choice Outstanding Academic Title (2006) for her edited work Black Africans in Renaissance Europe. She has advised doctoral students on Renaissance Italian history, Portuguese history, and Hong Kong colonial studies. Past collaborative research includes penal reform in colonial Hong Kong and the regularization of religious institutions in Borgo San Sepolcro.

She co-convenes the IHR research seminar on late medieval/early modern Italian history and holds editorial roles for the I Tatti Studies series (Harvard UP). Her work bridges Renaissance social dynamics, global migration patterns, and colonial history.