Academic & Teaching staff

Dr Matthew Treherne

Director of LHRI; Senior Lecturer in Italian

Dr Matthew Treherne

+44 (0)113 34 38612

Director of the Leeds Humanities Research Institute

Co-Director of the Leeds Centre for Dante Studies

Principal Investigator, AHRC-funded Project on "Dante and Late Medieval Florence: Theology in Poetry, Practice and Society"

Biography

I graduated in Italian and French from Cambridge University, where I later completed an MPhil in European Literature, and a Diploma in Management Studies. I went on to work in London as a business strategy consultant, and co-founded and co-managed a translation company. I returned to Cambridge in 2001 to do a PhD on liturgy in Dante and Tasso. I was a lecturer in Italian at Cambridge for the year 2004-05, before moving to Leeds in 2005. Dante and Tasso are the primary focus of my research, although I have also worked on the American novelist Toni Morrison, and pastoral drama. I recently completed a manuscript on Dante's use of the sacraments and liturgy in the Commedia.  I am the Principal Investigator on the AHRC-funded project, "Dante and Late Medieval Florence: Theology in Poetry, Practice and Society", which brings together a team of seven researchers in a collaboration across the Universities of Leeds, Warwick and Notre Dame. 

In 2007 I co-founded the Leeds Centre for Dante Studies with my colleague Claire Honess, with the aim of supporting research, teaching and public understanding of Dante. Building on our research activity, we also run a rich programme of activities for undergraduate and postgraduate students, and for the public.

I have a strong teaching interest in the visual arts, and won the Faculty of Arts Development Teaching Prize in 2007 for my work in this area. In 2007 I received a University Teaching Fellowship developmental award, and in 2010 became a full University Teaching Fellow. My University Teaching Fellowship project is on the relationship between research and student employability.

I am Director of the Leeds Humanities Research Institute (LHRI). This role gives me the opportunity to work with colleague across the humanities in developing research projects, and in fostering a lively and successful environment for research in the arts and humanities at Leeds. 

Research and selected publications

Edited volumes

'The scholars represented in this interdisciplinary collection explore the poem's claims to function as a text embodying theological truth and, more particularly, as a poetic representation of the experience of the mystical. Their efforts comprise a landmark in modern Dante studies.' - Steven Botterill, University of California, Berkeley

Articles

  • 'Figuring In, Figuring Out: Narration and Negotiation in Toni Morrison's Jazz', Narrative, 11 (May 2003), 199-212
  • 'Ekphrasis and Eucharist: The Poetics of Seeing God's Art in Purgatorio X', The Italianist 26 (2) (2006), 177-95
  • 'Pictorial Space and Sacred Time: Tasso's Le lagrime della beata vergine and the Experience of Religious Art in the Counter-Reformation', Italian Studies 26 (1) (2007), 5-25; 
  • 'Dante', in The Year's Work in Modern Language Studies 2005 (London: Maney, 2007)
  • 'Dante', in The Year's Work in Modern Language Studies 2006 (co-authored with Vittorio Montemaggi) (London: Maney, 2008)
  • 'Art and Nature Put to Scorn: On the Sacramental in the Purgatorio', in Art and Nature in Dante (Dublin, forthcoming)
  • 'Problems of Pastoral Tragicomedy: Il pastor fido and its Early Critical Reception', in Early Modern Tragicomedy (eds Raphael Lyne and Subha Mukherji) (Rochester NY: Boydell and Brewer, 2007), pp. 28-42
  • 'Liturgy as a Mode of Theological Discourse in Tasso's Late Poetry', in Forms of Faith, pp. 233-54

Study Guides

  • Dante, 'Purgatorio' (for University of London External Programme, 2006)
  • Dante, 'Inferno' (co-authored with Vittorio Montemaggi, for University of London External Programme, 2006)

Reviews

I have written for the Times Literary Supplement on medieval and Renaissance Italian literature.

Editorial work

I was assistant editor of Italian Studies (2005-08), and reviews co-editor of Renaissance Studies (2007-10).

Teaching Projects

Collaboration and organisation

  • Discovering Dante: A Season of Public Events (2009)
  • Leeds Centre for Dante Studies Research Programme
  • Reviewing Dante's Theology
  • UK Network for the Study of Medieval Italian Culture
  • The Culture of Renaissance Venice: public lecture series, October-November 2008
  • Art and Literature in Siena, 1250-1600: public lecture series, October-November 2007
  • Leeds Series in Dante Studies 2006-07
  • Forms of Faith: the influence of religious change on artistic, literary and musical culture in sixteenth-century Italy: International conference held in Leeds, March 30-31 2007
  • Dante's 'Commedia': theology as poetry: International conference held in Cambridge, December 2003

Research supervision

I am able to supervise research on: Dante and medieval literature; Tasso and Renaissance literature.