Public Health Frontiers: Information, Knowledge, and Governance in the Early Modern Adriatic
Seconded at: Science and Research Center (ZRS) – Koper
Period: April 2026
Johann Petitjean has been an Associate Professor at the University of Poitiers since 2014, where he teaches early modern history and political science. A graduate of the École normale supérieure de Lyon, he completed his doctorate at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne under the supervision of Wolfgang Kaiser. His first book, L’intelligence des choses: une histoire de l’information entre Italie et Méditerranée (XVIe–XVIIe siècle) was published in 2013 by the Presses de l’École française de Rome, where he previously served as a research fellow. His early work examined the circulation of political and military news between the Ottoman Empire, the Republic of Ragusa, Venice, and Rome, demonstrating their key role in shaping the first early modern information society. He also co-directed a program on medieval and early modern administrations, published in 2019 as Écritures grises by the École nationale des Chartes. His current project investigates how the Venetian Magistrato alla Sanità collected and archived public health data, and how such information functioned as a social, political, and geopolitical resource.
