Lena Breda

Lena Breda is a DPhil student in History at Jesus College. Lena is investigating how civilians responded to sixteenth-century urban construction in Rome. Given that most of the existing literature on pre-modern urbanism focuses on the intentions and participation of the elite, Lena is particularly interested in the activities of the working classes. More broadly, she is interested in the modes of social and political communication across the socio-economic spectrum, and the meaning and construction of urban space.

Before coming to Oxford, Lena received her MPhil at the University of Cambridge in Early Modern History. She was a 2021 Fulbright Scholar to Bologna, Italy, and received her B.A. in History and Italian from the University of Chicago in 2020. For more information on Lena's research, please see her faculty page.