John Gagné

John Gagné is Cassamarca Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Sydney. He completed his BA at the University of Toronto and his PhD at Harvard University, and has taught at Sydney since 2010. 

John is a historian of Italy from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries with particular focus on the Italian Wars of the sixteenth century. He was Francesco de Dombrowski Fellow at Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in 2016-17; and the Australian Research Council funded his project on writing paper and the challenge of obsolescence and lost documentation in early modern Europe from 2017-21. His book, Milan Undone: Contested Sovereignties in the Italian Wars, appeared in 2021. 

Among other areas, his research explores material culture, gender, and the cultural history of war. He is currently at work on study of the materiality of premodern flags and banners with the art historian Timothy McCall. At Sydney he is also director of the Medieval and Early Modern Centre.