Charlotte Visconsi

Working under the supervision of Dr. Giuseppe Marcocci, Charlotte is pursuing an MPhil in Early Modern History (1500-1700).

She works on the social and cultural history of early modern Spain, specifically concerning questions of religious difference, foodways, and law. And while she has primarily focused on Islamic minority groups within Spain, Charlotte is also interested in the myriad subaltern communities living throughout the Iberian Mediterranean, including conversos, enslaved Africans, and accused witches, to name a few.

She began studying Islamic Spain as an undergraduate at the College of William & Mary, from which she graduated in 2025 with a B.A. in History and a minor in Hispanic Studies. Charlotte also received Highest Honours for her undergraduate thesis entitled: “Los Moriscos que están padeciendo en Alicante”: Post-Expulsion Morisco Litigation in the Case of La Flor de la Mar. The project examined the legal knowledge of Moriscos who returned to and litigated in Spain following their forced expulsion between 1609 and 1614. It centres around an extensive, but little-known legal case wherein a group of exiled Moriscos were captured, enslaved, and forcibly returned to the Iberian Peninsula. Notably, the thesis includes her original transcription of the seven Morisco petitions included amongst the case documents. It can be accessed here: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/entities/publication/91df681f-c905-453c-94d6-832a72b96353.    

Nowadays, Charlotte continues to work on the history of Moriscos with a special interest in the intersection between religious customs, in particular foodways, and law. Her MPhil dissertation examines the early modern belief in the transformative power of food, especially as it relates to the inherited physical distinctions (i.e. limpieza de sangre) associated with religious identity in the final decades of the sixteenth century. This project is supported by the 2026 De Osma Studentship, which allows Charlotte to pursue her research at the Instituto Don Juan de Valencia in Madrid.

You can reach her via university email: charlotte.visconsi@spc.ox.ac.uk