Eidolon Staff

Ada Palmer is a Associate Professor in the History department at the University of Chicago, focusing on radical thought and the recovery of the classics in the Renaissance. She studies Renaissance manuscript production and early printing, the teaching and editing of Latin and Greek classics, censorship and the Inquisition, networks of scholarly patronage especially in Florence and Rome, and Renaissance reactions to Epicureanism, Stoicism, Platonism, Pythagoreanism, skepticism, and other ancient schools of thought. Her first academic book Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance examines Latin marginalia and commentaries in the first Renaissance copies of Lucretius, and the impact of the rediscovery of classical atomism on the birth of modern thought. Her current projects include a history of philosophical skepticism from antiquity to the Enlightenment, and a collaborative project exploring the impact of new information technologies on censorship and information control, comparing the print revolution to the digital revolution.  Palmer is also an award-winning science fiction novelist, a composer, a historical consultant for anime and manga publishers, and writes the philosophy and travel blog ExUrbe.com.