Lia Markey (MA Syracuse University in Florence 2001; MA University of Chicago 2002; Ph.D. University of Chicago 2008) is the Director of the Center for Renaissance Studies at the Newberry Library in Chicago, where she is responsible for conferences, symposia, workshops, seminars, and digital humanities projects devoted to medieval and early modern studies. Dr. Markey’s research examines cross-cultural exchange between Italy and the Americas in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, collecting history, early modern prints and drawings, and cartography. Publications include Imagining the Americas in Medici Florence (Penn State University Press, 2016) and a co-edited volume The New World in Early Modern Italy, 1492-1750 (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Her edited volume, Renaissance Invention: Stradanus’s “Nova Reperta” (Northwestern University Press, 2020) complemented the Newberry Library’s fall 2020 exhibition by the same title. Most recently, she co-curated the Newberry exhibition Seeing Race Before Race and co-edited a volume with the same name with Noémie Ndiaye (2023). Dr. Markey teaches at the University of Chicago and has held fellowships at the Folger Library, the Warburg Institute, Harvard's Villa I Tatti, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Herzog August Bibliothek, the European University Institute in Florence, and the Getty Museum.
