Dr Lynn Martin

Biography/ Background

Lynn Martin is an award-winning historian, a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, and a recipient of a Centenary Medal from the Australian government for his contribution to Australian society through history.

In a previous incarnation as a historian Prof. Martin specialised in the history of the Jesuits, and his books included The Jesuit Mind: The Mentality of an Elite in Early Modern France and Plague? Jesuit Accounts of Epidemic Disease in the Sixteenth Century, plus shorter pieces on Roman prostitutes, insanity in the sixteenth century, the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, the family, and papal policies during the wars of religion.

More recently he abandoned the Jesuits for drink and now specialises in the history of drinking in traditional Europe. This phase of his career has resulted in a book on Alcohol, Sex, and Gender in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe.

In 1997 Prof. Martin became Founder-Director of the University of Adelaide’s Research Centre for the History of Food and Drink, a position he held until 2004. As Director he was responsible for the establishment of the University’s Graduate Program in Gastronomy and was the Program’s first Managing Director. He also edited with Barbara Santich two books that resulted from the Research Centre’s series of conferences and symposia, Gastronomic Encounters and Culinary History.

Although officially retiring at the end of 2003, Prof. Martin still keeps active as a Visiting Research Fellow. He also edits the Research Centre’s Newsletter, is an International Juror for the Slow Food Movement and on the Editorial Board of Food, Culture, and Society, supervises honours and postgraduate students, and teaches honours seminars.

Publications

1. 1999 National Reputations for Drinking in Traditional Europe, Parergon, XVII, pp. 163-186.
2. 2001 'Old People, Alcohol and Identity in Europe, 1300-1700,' in Peter Scholliers, ed., Food and Identity: Cooking, Eating and Drinking in Europe Since the Middle Ages, Oxford: Berg, pp. 119-137.
3. 2003 ‘Fetal Alcohol Syndrome in Europe, 1300-1700: A Review of Data on Alcohol Consumption and a Hypothesis,’ Food and Foodways, XI, pp. 1-26 (winner of the Sophie Cole Prize awarded by Oxford Symposium on Food).
4. 2003 ‘The Baptism of Wine in Traditional Europe,’ Gastronomica, III, pp. 21-31.
5. 2003 ‘Alcohol and the Clergy in Traditional Europe,’ in Lee Palmer Wandel, ed., At the Frontiers of the Reformation, Kirksville MO: Sixteenth-Century Studies Publications, pp. 23-40.
6. 2004 ‘Gastronomic Encounters,’ co-authored with Barbara Santich, in Martin and Santich, eds., Gastronomic Encounters, Adelaide: East Street Publishers, pp. 1-20.
7. 2006 ‘Drinking and Alehouses in the Diary of an English Mercer’s Apprentice, 1663-1674,’ in Mack P. Holt, ed., Alcohol: A Social and Cultural History, Oxford: Berg, pp. 93-106.

Expertise for Media Contact

Categories	History
Expertise	History of the bubonic plague; history of food and drink; Italy (16th Century religious and social history); European history; art (16th century)
Notes	Alt phone: (08) 8303 5611
After hours	(08) 8271 6970

Entry last updated: Saturday, 15 Sep 2012