History professor awarded prestigious fellowships

Morgantown, WV, April 24, 2006: Dr. Matthew Vester, assistant professor of history in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences at West Virginia University, has been awarded several prestigious fellowships for international academic research opportunities.

The Villa I Tatti Fellowship from the Harvard University Institute for Italian Renaissance Studies will allow Vester to spend the 2006-2007 academic year in Florence, Italy, where he’ll conduct research on a project entitled “The Geography of Political Culture in the Early Modern Alps: The Val d’Aosta, 1550-1630.” The project uses microhistorical methods and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) analysis to examine political culture in the Alpine duchy of Aosta during the late Renaissance.

Vester was also awarded the “Learn German in Germany” grant from the German Academic Exchange Service, sponsored by the German government. The grant will fund a month-long language study program in August at the Goethe Institute in Munich.

“This will enable me to improve my German skills so that I can read the secondary German-language scholarship on Alpine studies more effectively and discuss my project with German-language scholars,” said Vester.

Vester received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1997. His area of specialization is Early Modern Europe, and his research interests include comparative social and political culture in old regime France and Italy, Alpine history, local political geography, and family history. Vester’s work has also been published in several history journals.

For more information, please contact Dr. Matthew Vester at 304-293-2421, ext. 5232, or at Matt.Vester@mail.wvu.edu.

W-V-U