Dr Natalie Francis Massong

Natalie is a Lecturer in Historical and Critical Studies in the School of Design. Her research speciality is the art and architecture of Early Modern Italy with particular interest in how social factors such as age, gender, class and occupational status impact the spatial experience of the early modern city. 

She completed her PhD in Analysis and Management of Cultural Heritage at IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, Italy in 2024. Her PhD research, entitled Circumventing Plague: The Spatial Experience of Women and Men during the Outbreak of 1630-31 Bologna, was funded by IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca and by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Her thesis examined the relationships between early modern people and places during the period of plague in Bologna from 1630-31 through the lens of the new mobilities paradigm. This study demonstrated how urban experience and the public health management of early modern plague was informed by mobility. Specifically, architecture, in combination with regulations and disciplinary punishment, were used to contain, control and limit the movement of people.

Despite immobility, men and women found ways to circumvent restrictions. They crossed architectural divides by way of health passes or illicit activities and traversed physical but also social boundaries through professional opportunities. This study revealed how social dimensions contributed to varying degrees of mobility as women, men, the nobility and the poor each had diverse experiences of plague.