Sharjah

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Profile

College / Department

College of Arts and Sciences
Department of International Studies

Teaching areas

African History, African Diaspora, World History, European Expansion and Empires,

Research areas

Early Modern African-European Relations, African Diaspora in Europe, Slave Trade, Missionarism in the Horn of Africa, Italian Colonialism

Education

BA in Political Science, Universita' degli Studi di Bologna, 2000
PhD in History, Temple University, 2010

Professional experience

Associate Professor of History, American University of Sharjah, 2018-
Assistant Professor of History, American University of Sharjah, 2016-2018
Visiting Instructor of African History, Rowan University, NJ, USA, 2007-2009
Visiting Instructor of African History, Dickinson College,PA, USA, 2009-2010
Assistant Professor of History, Gulf University for Science and Technology, Kuwait, 2010-2016

Memberships

World History Association (WHA), African Studies Association (ASA)

Contact

msalvadore@aus.edu
+971 6 515 2336

Dr. Matteo Salvadore

Associate Professor
PhD in History, Temple University, Philadelphia, USA

Matteo Salvadore is a broadly trained world historian with a research interest in the Horn of Africa and its diaspora. His recent book, The African Prester John and the Birth of Ethiopian-European Relations, 1402-1555, explores early modern dealings between the Kingdom of Ethiopia and Renaissance Europe. He has also contributed scholarship to the Journal of World History, Northeast African Studies, World History Connected, Encyclopaedia Aethiopica and the Oxford Dictionary of African Biography. Before joining AUS, Dr. Salvadore taught in colleges in the US and in Kuwait.

Publications

Matteo Salvadore,“Encounters between Ethiopia and the West, 1402-1632”, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History, New York: Oxford University Press, 2018
Matteo Salvadore, African Cosmopolitanism in the Early Modern Mediterranean: The Diasporic Life of Yohannes, the Ethiopian Pilgrim Who Became a Counter-Reformation Bishop, Journal of African History, 58, no. 1 (March 2017): 61–83.
[Research Monograph] Matteo Salvadore, The African Prester John and the Birth of Ethiopian-European Relations, 1402-1555. (New York: Routledge, 2016)
Matteo Salvadore, “Gaining the Heart of Prester John: Loyola’s Blueprint for Ethiopia in Three Key Documents”, World History Connected, 10:3 (2013).
Matteo Salvadore, “Muslim Partners, Catholic Foes: The Selective Isolation of Gondärine Ethiopia.” Northeast African Studies 12, no. 1 (2012): 51–72
Matteo Salvadore, “At the Borders of ‘Dark Africa’: Italian Expeditions to Ethiopia and the Bollettino della Società Geografica Italiana, 1867-1887.” In The Printed Media in Fin-de-siècle Italy: Publishers, Writers, and Readers, edited by Ann Caesar, Gabriella Romani, and Jennifer Burns, 107–19. London: Legenda, 2011.
Matteo Salvadore, “The Ethiopian Age of Exploration: Prester John’s Discovery of Europe, 1306–1458”, Journal of World History, vol. 21 issue 4, 2011, pp. 593-628.
Matteo Salvadore, “The Jesuit Mission to Ethiopia (1555-1634) and the Death of Prester John.” In World-Building and the Early Modern Imagination, edited by Allison B. Kavey, 141–72. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
Matteo Salvadore, “A Modern African Intellectual: Gäbre-Heywät Baykädañ’s Quest for Ethiopia’s Sovereign Modernity” Africa, (2007),62:4, p. 560-579.

Conference Presentations

"Cleric, Scholar, and Nearly a Missionary: Tesfa Seyon in Early Modern Rome, XX International Conference of Ethiopian Studies,Mekelle, Ethiopia, 1-5 October 2018
"Kidnapped into Slavery and Tried by the Goa Inquisition: The unwilling journey of Gabriel, a 16th century Ethiopian Jew, Toronto, Canada, Canadian Association of African Studies,31 May ? 2 June 2017
"A Diaspora of Opportunities: Ethiopians in Counter-Reformation Rome, 1540-1560", New York African Studies Association Annual Meeting, New York, 1-2 April 2016
"Gaining the Heart of Prester John: Loyola?s Blueprint for Ethiopia in Three Key Documents", World History Association Conference, San Jose, Costa Rica, July 15-18 2014
"Joao Bermudez (1491?1570): A Barber Turned Patriarch Caught between Holy Wars in the Horn", New York African Studies Association Annual Meeting, Binghamton, NY, 4-5 April 2013
"The Militant Geographer: James Bruce in 18th Century Ethiopia", African Studies Association Annual Meeting , Washington D.C., 17-21 November 2011
"Prester John married me to the woman I now have with me": the European Discovery of Ethiopia in the Late 15th Century, XVII International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 2-5 November 2009
"This Generation of Ethiopians Loves Us Christians above All": The Africanization of Prester John and the Creation of a Euro-African Christian Identity during the Crusades, XVII Annual World History Association Conference, Salem, MA, 25-28 June 2009
"Travelling and reporting on the borders of Dark Africa: Italian expeditions to Ethiopia and the Bollettino della Societa` Geografica Italiana, 1867?1896", Technology and the Printed Media in Italy Between 1870 and 1914, Seton Hall University, South Orange, NJ, 16-17 October 2008
"Knowledge is an immovable eternal law which rules the world:" G?bre-Heyw?t Bayk?da??s Blueprint for Ethiopia?s Sovereign Modernity, 16th International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, Trondheim, Norway, 2-7 July 2007

Awards and Honors

Faculty Research Grant, AUS, 2017, 2018
Summer Seminar Grant, National Endowment for the Humanities, USA, 2017
Franklin Research Grant, American Philosophical Society, 2018
University of Missouri-Saint Louis Summer Faculty Fellowship, 2012.
Research Grant, Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Science, 2014

Other creative/research

[Book Review] The Archaeology of the Jesuit Missions in Ethiopia (1557-1632), by Víctor Manuel Fernández, Jorge de Torres, Andreu Martínez d’Alòs-Moner, and Carlos Cañete (2017) in Renaissance Quarterly, 2018.
[Book Review] On "Afro-European trade in the Atlantic World: The western Slave Coast c1550- c1885" by Silke Strickrodt, (2016) in African Affairs, (2017) 116 (462): 158-160
[Book Review] On "Violent Intermediaries: African Soldiers, Conquest, and EverydayColonialism in German East Africa" by Michelle Moyd, in The Middle Ground, 13, fall 2016.
[Encyclopedia Entries] “Antinori Expedition”, “Brocchi Da Imola” (with Gianfranco Fiaccadori), “Corrado Zoli”, “Moges Asgedom”, “Pirzio Biroli”, “Porro Expedition”, “Salimbeni Expedition”, “Zerray Derres” in Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, Hamburg: HarrassowitzVerlag. 2009–2015.
[Book Review] On "Red Sea Citizens" by Jonathan Miran, in International Journal of AfricanHistorical Studies, 43, no.1 (2010): 197-8.
[Encyclopedia Entries] “Gorgoryos”, “Tesfa Syon”, “Zaga Zaab” in Dictionary of African Biography, New York: Oxford University Press, 2011
[Invited Talk] "Between Faith and Color: European-African Relations in the Early ModernEra," Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah-Amricani Cultural Center, Kuwait, 6 January 2014
[Book Review] On "Early Modern Dutch Prints of Africa" by Elizabeth A. Sutton, inItinerario, 38, no.01 (2014): 171-2
[Invited Talk], "Transculturalism in the Early Modern Ethiopian-European World," BeyondOrientalism: Abyssinia and/in the World – Volkswagen Fellow Interdisciplinary Symposium atWashington University of St. Louis, 1 May 2015
[Book Review] On "European Slave Trading in the Indian Ocean, 1500-1850" by Richard B.Allen, in African Studies Quarterly, 15:4, September 2015, 89-90.
[Book Review] On "Envoys of a Human God: The Jesuit mission to Christian Ethiopia, 1557- 1632" by Andreu Martínez d’Alòs-Moner, in Renaissance Quarterly, Summer 2016, 69:2 ,745-750

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