Jason Harris

I am an historian, Latinist, and linguistic anthropologist working on early modern intellectual culture with particular attention to language, collaboration and associative patterns of behaviour. My research focuses upon Neo-Latin scholarship, intellectual culture in the early modern period, and non-hierarchical social movements.

Since 2008 I have been Director of the Centre for Neo-Latin Studies, Cork and in 2015 I was elected to become a Sodalis of the Academia Latinitati Fovendae.

The main focus of my research is the intellectual culture of early modern Europe. I draw upon philological and anthropological methods to study the social and linguistic fabric of life during the renaissance, the reformation, and the seventeenth century, with a particular focus on Neo-Latin scholarship and culture. My most recent publication is an edition and translation of John Milton's Latin defence of the execution of Charles I, volume seven of the Complete Works of John Milton (Oxford University Press, 2025).

My present research has two strands: 1) examination of Irish Latin writings to investigate the role of literary style within intellectual and scholarly debate in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; 2) exploration of anarchic social and cultural movements in the sixteenth century. I am currently editing volume three (Early Modern Period, 1450-1650) of a six-volume series A Cultural History of Protest, Dissent and Activism which will be published by Bloomsbury in 2027/2028. 

Research Areas:

• Neo-Latin Prose Writing and Stylistics.
• Irish Neo-Latin Texts.
• The Development and Spread of Renaissance Latin.
• Ortelius, Plantin, Lipsius and Humanism in the Low Countries.
• Religious Culture in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.
• Late Medieval and Early Modern History of Science and Medicine.
• Linguistic Anthropology.
• Linguistic Features of the Early Modern World.
• The History of Anarchism.
• Non-Hierarchical Organisation in Early Modern Europe.

In total throughout my career I have secured roughly €1,200,000 in research grants. The main projects are listed below:

Funding raised for the Historia Project:

• Dept of Arts, Heritage & the Gaeltacht (2011-12): €70,000
• Irish Manuscripts Commission (2011-13): €45,000
• University College Cork, CACSSS (2011-13): €25,000

Other Funding:

• IRCHSS Project Grant: The Third Tongue Project (2012-13): €119,121.20
• UCC Strategic Research Fund: Centre for Neo-Latin Studies (2012-13): €6,000
• IRCHSS Project Grant: Ad Fontes Project (2009-10): €119,413.20
• IRCHSS Postdoctoral Fellowship (2003-6): €96,000
• IRCHSS Postgraduate Scholarship (2001-3): €24,000
• IRCHSS Postgraduate Scholarship (2000, declined): €12,000

IRC-Funded Postdoctoral Researchers:

• Floris Verhaart (2020-2022)
• Nóirín Uí Bhreithiúnaigh (2012-14)
• Ian Campbell (2012-13)
• Jennifer Browne (2012-13)
• Kathleen Walker-Meikle (2009-10)

• Orla Keating, The Renaissance Reception of Columella (IRC Funded, NLI Funded)
• Margaret Madden, The De Regno Hiberniae Commentarius of Peter Lombard (IRC Funded)

• Shruti Rajgopal, Neo-Latin Ethnographic Descriptions of India from the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (2024) - NLI Funded.

• Laura Cronin, The Emergence of Postpartum Pathology: Sixteenth Century Discourse on Post-Partum Depression (2023) - IRC Funded.

• O'Donnell, Alma, Irish Exorcists in the Catholic Reformation (2020) - IRC Funded.

• Aislinn McCabe, A Political and Intellectual Portrait of Albertino Mussato (2019) - IRC Funded.

• Jennifer Browne, 'La violence et la mauvaise foi' : Context and Rhetoric in Pierre Bayle's Ce que c'est la France toute catholique (2013) - IRC Funded.

• Nóirín Uí Bhreithiúnaigh, Editio Anceps: The Manuscript Tradition of Giraldus Cambensis' Topographica Hibernica (2011) - IRC Funded.

• Nienke Tjoelker, The Alithinologia of John Lynch (2010) - IRC Funded.

Within the School of History, I teach modules on gender, witchcraft, social revolts and the intellectual culture of early modern Europe. For the Anthropology degree programme, I teach the second-year core module on Linguistic Anthropology.

In 2013 I established a weekly Latin conversation class in UCC, out of which emerged an annual summer course (the Schola Latina), which offers one week of full immersion in Latin as a tool for those who wish to improve their reading and comprehension of the language.

I have been nominated numerous times for the President's Award for Teaching and the President's Award for PhD Supervision.

As chair of the School of History Teaching and Learning Committee, I was central to the reform of the undergraduate curriculum of the History Department, 2022-3. I am currently (2025-) on the CACSSS Working Group for the reform of the BA Arts (CK101).

I have organised several pedagogical workshops:

• Comparing (An International Doctoral Summer School, funded by the IRC and CACSSS, 5-9 September 2011)
• Latin as a Research Tool I (funded by the IRC, 1 February 2013)
• Latin as a Research Tool II (funded by the IRC, 19 April 2013)
• Reading the Written Word (CACSSS Masterclass, 20-21 February 2014)
• Teaching Linguistic Anthropology ( 2 December, 2022)
• Teaching History in Irish Universities (SATLE-funded workshop, 1 December 2023)