Employment, Publications and Talks

Contact me directly for more information about my publications or talks, or to request a full CV.

Twitter: @NatCutter.
Email: nat [at] cutters [dot] org.

Employment History

2024-: Assistant Lecturer in History, University of Melbourne

2024-26: Mary Lugton Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Melbourne

2022-23: Teaching Associate (Periodic), History, University of Melbourne

2021-23: Research Coordinator, ARC LIEF Project Australian Cultural Data Engine, University of Melbourne

2022: Research Associate/Web Developer, ARC Discovery Project Albrecht Dürer’s Material World, University of Melbourne

2021: Research Coordinator, ARC DECRA Project The Sounds of Time under Dr Matthew Champion, Australian Catholic University.

2019-21: Sessional Academic, Medieval, Early Modern and Economic History, University of Melbourne

2021: Project Officer, Digital Studio, Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne

2020: Research Assistant/LMS Support, School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, University of Melbourne

2019: Research Assistant/Intern, Digital Studio, Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne, Digital Studio Graduate Internship Project Bunjil’s Biik: Mapping the Ancestral Country of the Boonwurrung

2018-19: Project Manager, School of Culture and Communication, Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne, ARC Linkage Project Creative Convergence: Enhancing Impact in Regional Theatre for Young People

2017-18: Project Officer, Digital Studio, Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne

Peer-Reviewed Publications

Tyne Daile Sumner, Nat Cutter and Rachel Fensham, Cultural Data: The Intimate Analytics of Digital Collections, monograph under contract with Routledge. Expected publication 2025

Nat Cutter, ‘Exile in Barbary: English-speaking expatriates, biblical theology, and mercantile ethics in the seventeenth-century Maghreb’, Renaissance Studies (2024), Renaissance Studies (2025), published online 5 November 2024, https://doi.org/10.1111/rest.12965. In special issue ‘Innovation and Exile in the Early Modern World’, edited by Christophe Gillain and Annalisa Nicholson.

Rachel Fensham, Tyne Sumner, and Nat Cutter et al., ‘Towards a National Data Architecture for Cultural Collections: Designing the Australian Cultural Data Engine’, Digital Humanities Quarterly 18, 2 (2024). Available at http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/18/2/000678/000678.html.

Lubaaba al-Azami, Nat Cutter, Peter Good and Aisha Hussain, eds, ‘Transcultural Encounters Between England and the Islamic Worlds’, special issue of Renaissance Studies 37, 5 (2023). Articles available at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/14774658/0/0.

Nat Cutter, ‘Knowing the Maghreb in Stuart Scotland, Ireland and Northern England’, Renaissance Studies 37, 5 (2023): 767-90. Available at https://doi.org/10.1111/rest.12885.

Nat Cutter, Tyne Daile Sumner and Rachel Fensham,  ‘The Slipperiness of Name: Gender and Biography in Australian Cultural Databases’, Gender & History (2023), published online 5 June 2023. Available at https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0424.12699.

Tyne Daile Sumner, Rachel Fensham, Nat Cutter and Joanna Mendelssohn, ‘What’s In A Name? A Cross-Section of Biography, Gender & Metadata in the Design & Art Australia Online Database’, in Proceedings of the Twentieth International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications, University of Washington, October 2022, published online August 2023. Available at: https://doi.org/10.23106/dcmi.953116014.

Nat Cutter, ‘Baker, Thomas (b. 1639/40, d. 1729), diplomatist and diarist’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, published online 10 August 2023. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/odnb/9780198614128.013.90000380753.

Nat Cutter, ‘Goodwyn, Thomas (d. 1722/27), merchant and diplomatist’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, published online 10 August 2023. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/odnb/9780198614128.013.90000380754.

Nat Cutter, ‘Stedham, Edith (d. 1695), housekeeper and merchant’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, published online 10 August 2023. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/odnb/9780198614128.013.90000380783.

Nat Cutter, ‘Grateful Fresh Advices and Random Dark Relations: Maghrebi News and Experiences in British Expatriate Letters, 1660-1710’. Special issue of Cultural and Social History, edited by Giada Pizzoni. Available online 21 February 2022 at https://go.unimelb.edu.au/xb3i.

Nat Cutter, ‘“Grieved in my soul that I suffered you to depart from me”: Isolation and Community in the English Houses at Tunis and Tripoli, 1679-1686’, in Keeping Family in an Age of Long Distance Trade, Imperial Expansion and Exile 1550-1850, edited by Heather Dalton (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020), 169-89. Available at: http://go.unimelb.edu.au/tz3j

Nat Cutter, ‘Between Captives and Consuls: Searching for the “Little English” of Barbary’ (Greg Dening Memorial Lecture), Melbourne Historical Journal 47, 1 (2019/20): 129-39.

Nat Cutter, ‘Peace with Pirates? Maghrebi Maritime Combat, Diplomacy, and Trade in English Periodical News, 1622-1714’, Humanities 8, 4 (2019), article no. 179, special issue ‘Pirates in English Literature’ edited by Claire Jowitt and Manushag Powell. Available at: http://go.unimelb.edu.au/j85r

Nat Cutter, ‘Turks, Moors, Deys and Kingdoms: North African Diversity in English News before 1700’, Melbourne Historical Journal 46 (2018): 61-84. Available at: http://go.unimelb.edu.au/x85r

Book Reviews

Nat Cutter, Review of Tom MacInally, George Strachan of the Mearns: Sixteenth Century Orientalist (Edinburgh University Press, 2022), invited for Scottish Historical Review, forthcoming 2023.

Nat Cutter, Review of Sascha R. Klement, Representations of Global Civility: English Travellers in the Ottoman Empire and the South Pacific, 1636-1863 (Transcript, 2021), Parergon, forthcoming 2023.

Nat Cutter, Review of Jorun Poettering, Migrating Merchants: Trade, Nation, and Religion in Seventeenth-Century Hamburg and Portugal (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2019), Parergon, 37, 2 (2020): 241-43. Available at: http://go.unimelb.edu.au/yw8i

Nat Cutter, Review of Gary K. Waite, Jews and Muslims in Seventeenth-Century Discourse: From Religious Enemies to Allies and Friends (New York and Abingdon: Routledge, 2019), Parergon 37, 1 (2020): 295-97. Available at: http://go.unimelb.edu.au/44zr

Nat Cutter, Review of Patricia Akhimie, Shakespeare and the Cultivation of Difference: Race and Conduct in the Early Modern World (New York and Abingdon: Routledge, 2018), Parergon 36, 1 (2019): 179-80. Available at: http://go.unimelb.edu.au/r85r

Digital Projects and Online Publications

Nat Cutter, ‘Performing Diplomacy and Selling Spectacle’, Collation blog, Folger Shakespeare Library, 14 July 2022, https://collation.folger.edu/2022/07/performing-diplomacy/

Nat Cutter, ‘Hadge Biram: A Restoration Renegade’, British Library Untold Lives blog, 25 July 2022, https://blogs.bl.uk/untoldlives/2022/07/hadge-biram-a-restoration-renegade.html

Nat Cutter, ‘From enemies to neighbours: British merchants in the Maghreb’, Aeon, 31 May 2022, https://aeon.co/essays/from-enemies-to-neighbours-british-merchants-in-the-maghreb

Nat Cutter, ‘Freshest Advices from Barbary: News & Information Flows Between Restoration Britain and the Maghreb’, Hakluyt Society Blog, 13 March 2022, https://hakluytsociety.wordpress.com/2022/03/13/freshest-advices-from-barbary-news/

Medieval and Early Modern Orients, AHRC/University of Liverpool, https://memorients.com/ (founding contributor and subeditor)

Nat Cutter, ‘Performance, advertising, and Anglo-Maghrebi diplomacy in Restoration and Augustan London’, Shakespeare and Beyond blog, Folger Shakespeare Library, 27 April 2021, https://shakespeareandbeyond.folger.edu/2021/04/27/performance-advertising-anglo-maghrebi-diplomacy-restoration-augustan-london/

Albrecht Dürer’s Material World (2022), duerersmaterialworld.org (website developer and content creator)

Australian Cultural Data Engine (2021-23), acd-engine.org (website developer and content creator)

The Sounds of Time (2021), soundsoftime.org (website developer and content creator)

‘The Islamic World’ (2020), MEMSLib, University of Kent (contributor), https://www.memslib.co.uk/the-islamic-world

Boonwurrung Songlines: Mapping the Ancestral Country of the Boonwurrung (2019), Bunjil’s Biik/University of Melbourne (research, data management, online map production), http://go.unimelb.edu.au/wk8r 

With Septi Rito Tombe and Megan Upton, Circuit: Mapping Theatre Performance in Victoria (2018), ARC/University of Melbourne, https://circuit.unimelb.edu.au (data collection and entry, contribution to creative development and project management)

Nat Cutter, ‘The Overland Letter’ (2017), University of Melbourne Archives, http://blogs.unimelb.edu.au/archives/the-overland-letter/ (sole author)

The Victorian Trades Hall: An Archival History (2015), University of Melbourne Omeka exhibition, http://go.unimelb.edu.au/8m6r (lead writer and exhibition curator)

Selected Grants & Prizes

With Andrea Rizzi, Nicholas Terpstra, and others, The Fabric of Trust: Early Modern Materiality, Sense, and Gender, Manchester-Melbourne-Toronto Joint Research Fund, 2025-26, $15,000 AUD + $14,000 CAD

Ottoman Africa in the Mediterranean World: English Merchants, Networked Trade, 1675-1750, Mary Lugton Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2024-26, $300,000 AUD (approx).

With Tyne Daile Sumner, Su Baker and others, Legacy and Language: The Ethics of AI Interventions into Art + Australia’s 60-year-old Magazine Archive, Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Ethics Seed Funding, University of Melbourne, 2023, $5000 AUD

Material Cultures and British-Maghrebi Relations, 1600-1800, University of Melbourne Early Career Researcher Grants, 2023, $25000 AUD

With Rachel Fensham, Tyne Daile Sumner, and the Australian Cultural Data Engine team, Research Infrastructure Excellence Award for Innovation and Contribution to Research 2023, University of Melbourne

Bibliotheca Barbaria: Reception and Diffusion of Texts about the Maghreb in Early Modern Britain, William A. Ringler, Jr. Short-Term Fellowship, Huntington Library, 2022-23, $3500 USD

Power, Print and Materiality: Morocco Leather and British-Maghrebi Relations, 1600-1800, ANZAMEMS Early Career Fellowship, 2022-23, $3000 AUD + six-month mentorship

Moorish Habits and Civil Entertainments: Performance‚ Advertising‚ and Anglo-Maghrebi Diplomacy‚ 1681-1734, 2021 American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies/Folger Shakespeare Library Fellowship, 2021-22, $3500 USD

2021 Hakluyt Society Essay Prize, £1000 GBP

2019 SHAPS Fellows’ Group Annual History Essay Prize, University of Melbourne, $250 AUD

2018 Greg Dening Memorial Prize, University of Melbourne, $600 AUD

Conferences and Talks

Nat Cutter, ‘Merchant Networks in Ottoman Tunis, 1675-1715: Wheat and War’, Early Modern Circle, University of Melbourne, 18 March 2024

Nat Cutter, ‘Reading the Maghreb in Early Modern Britain: Marginalia, Provenance and Networks of Interest’, Legacies and Relevance: Exploring the Medieval & Early Modern World Beyond Europe, ANZAMEMS Fourteenth Biennial Conference, University of Canterbury, Auckland, 8-11 February 2024

Nat Cutter, ‘The Present State of Algiers: Non-Fiction, News and Community Reception between Britain and the Maghreb in the Late 17th CE/11th Century AH’, invited keynote for The Middle East and North Africa in English Literature, Abou Bekr Belkaid University, Tlemcen, Algeria, 30 November 2023

Nat Cutter, ‘British Merchant Communities and Uncertain Futures in the Tunisian Civil Wars’, Unsettling Certainties, Society for the History of Emotions Conference, University of Adelaide, 28 November-1 December 2023

Nat Cutter, ‘Reading the Maghreb in Early Modern Britain: Marginalia, Provenance and Networks of Interest’, English and Theatre Studies/Enlightenment, Romanticism and Contemporary Culture Research Unit Seminar Series, University of Melbourne, 18 October 2023

Nat Cutter, ‘English Merchant Futures in Tunis and Algiers, 1680-1710: Expectations, Persistence and Drudgery’, Digital Methods for the Study of Temporality and Epistolary Culture, University of Antwerp/University of Melbourne, 10 October 2023

Nat Cutter, ‘Morocco Leather Bindings and British-North African Trade’, Beyond the Book: Transforming the Early Modern Archive, State Library of Victoria, 10-11 August 2023

‘Barbarous Bindings: Morocco Leather, Maghrebi Trade, and Elite Prejudice in Early Modern Britain’, Embellishments, Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand Conference, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, 28-29 November 2022

Nat Cutter, ‘Morocco Leather’s Diffusion in Early Modern Britain’, Mapping Culture and History, University of Newcastle, 17-18 November 2022 (invited talk)

Nat Cutter and Tyne Sumner, ‘Mapping Cultural Data and Iconicity: Approaches and Interpretation’, Mapping Culture and History, University of Newcastle, 17-18 November 2022 (invited talk)

Tyne Daile Sumner, Rachel Fensham and Nat Cutter, with Joanna Mendelssohn and Scott East, ‘What’s in a Name? A Cross-Section of Biography, Gender & Metadata in Cultural and Performing Arts Databases’, International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications, University of Washington, Seattle, 3-14 October 2022.

Nat Cutter, ‘Zealous, Ingullible, Haughty, Infamous: Anglophone Freewomen in the Ottoman Maghreb, 1670-1720’, Dynamic Peer Review Seminar in dialogue with Bernadette Andrea and Deirdre Coleman, School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne, 14 October 2022

Nat Cutter, ‘Pragmatism and Prejudice: Judgements of Maghrebi People and Society in English-Language Letters and Print, c.1660-1710’, Islamic Studies Speaker Series, Asia Institute, University of Melbourne, 5 October 2022

‘Pragmatism and Prejudice: Judgements of Maghrebi People and Society in English-Language Letters and Print, c.1660-1710’, Islamic Studies Seminar, Asia Institute, University of Melbourne, 29 September 2022 (invited talk)

With Rachel Fensham and Tyne Sumner, ‘The Slipperiness of Name: Gender and Biography in Australian Cultural Databases’, Urgent Histories, Australian Historical Association Conference, Deakin University, 27 June-1 July 2022

‘Barbarian Bindings: Morocco Leather and Maghrebi Trade in British Society and Culture, 1550-1750’, Reception & Emotion, ANZAMEMS Thirteenth Biennial Conference, University of Western Australia, 27-30 June 2022

‘Encountering the Maghreb in Scotland, Ireland and Northern England, 1660-1716’, as part of co-organised panel ‘Islamic Pirates and Imperial Knowledge in the Early Modern World’, Social Networks and Communication in the Medieval and Early Modern World, CMRS Annual Symposium, 22 April 2022

‘Zealous, Ingullible, Haughty, Infamous: Whispered Archives and Creative Narratives of British Freewomen in the Ottoman Maghreb, 1670-1720’, Small Data is Beautiful: Analytics, Art and Narrative Symposium, University of Melbourne, 18-19 February 2022

‘From Hyde Park to the Playhouses: Maghrebi Ambassadors, Performance, and Public Display in England, 1681-1734’, Territories of Diplomacy: The Anglo-American World and International Relations in the 17th and 18th Centuries, Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès, 21-22 January 2022 (invited talk). Recording available here: https://go.unimelb.edu.au/4nre

With Peter Good and Aisha Hussain, ‘Medieval and Early Modern Orients: A Digital Decolonial Platform’, roundtable for Séminaire Hospitalité, Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès, 19 January 2022 (invited talk)

‘Barbarian Civility: British Expatriates, Periodical News, and the Transformation of the Maghreb in British Eyes, 1660-1714’, Early Modern Circle, University of Melbourne, 15 November 2021 (invited talk)

‘Travelling Discourses,’ Medieval and Early Modern Orients roundtable, Decolonising Travel Studies: Sources and Approaches, Hakluyt Society Symposium, 11-12 November 2021 (invited talk)

‘Genteel Guests of the Consul: Travelling in Barbary with Augustus Holstein (1675-76) and Lucy Newark (1698-99)’, Cultures of Travel: Tourism, Pilgrimage, Migration, TACMRS Annual Conference, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, 22-23 October 2021

‘Reprinting and Rebinding “Barbary”: Expatriate Knowledge, Periodical News, and Maghrebi Material Culture in British Restoration Society’, Conceptualising Intercultural Contact in Early Modern Britain and Beyond Symposium, University of Bielefeld, 21 October 2021 (invited talk)

‘Barbarian Civility: British Expatriates, Periodical News, and the Transformation of the Maghreb in British Eyes, 1660-1714’, History Research Seminar, Macquarie University, Sydney, 12 October 2021 (invited talk)

‘Knowing the Maghreb in Stuart Ireland, Scotland and Northern England’, Merchants, Monarchs and Media: Power Play and Mercantile Pursuits in the Early Modern Islamic Worlds, Society for Renaissance Studies/MEMOs Seminar Series, 5 September 2021

‘The Freshest Advices from Barbary: Maghrebi News and Experiences in British Expatriate Letters, 1660-1705’, Britain and the World Conference, University of Plymouth, 16-18 June 2021 [rescheduled from 17-19 June 2020 due to COVID-19]

‘Death, Succession, and Community in the English House at Ottoman Tunis, 1695-1711’, Until Death Do Us Part: Historical Perspectives on Death and Those Left Behind, c.1300-1800, Royal Holloway University of London, 15-16 April 2021

‘“With more civility than could be expected from those Infidels, who delight chiefly in Rapine and Blood”: Reading the Maghreb in Scotland, Ireland and the North of England, 1660-1714’, Enemies in the Early Modern World 1453-1789: Conflict, Culture and Control, University of Edinburgh, 26-29 March

‘Exile in Barbary: Ethical, Moral and Religious Life among British Protestants in the Maghreb, c. 1660-1714’, Self and State: Exile in the Early Modern World, University of Cambridge, 24-25 March

‘A Christian (in Habit) from Head to Foot: British expatriates, everyday life, and cultural fluidity in the Ottoman Maghreb, 1660-1710’, Habit in the Long Eighteenth Century, University College London, 20-21 February 2021

‘Christian Charity or Captive Market? The Commerce of Barbary Redemptions, 1677-1700’, Dark Enlightenments, XVII David Nichol Smith Seminar in Eighteenth-Century Studies, November-December 2020

‘Gardens, Drunkards, Parties and Plague: British Expatriates and the Good Life in Barbary, c.1680-1700’, CMRS Annual Symposium, Monash University, 2 October 2020 [rescheduled from 24 April 2020 due to COVID-19]

‘British Expatriates, Periodical News and the Transformation of “Barbary” in Restoration England’, History Brown Bag Seminar Series, University of Melbourne, 26 September 2020

‘Pirates or Partners? Expatriates, Periodical News and the Transformation of the Maghreb in British Popular Thought, 1622-1714’, SHAPS Fellows Group, University of Melbourne, 26 August 2020 [postponed from 25 March due to COVID-19]. https://player.vimeo.com/video/453110820

‘The First Misery of Barbary: Plague, Medicine, Recovery and Death for British Expatriates in the Ottoman Maghreb, 1660-1710’, Reconsidering Illness and Recovery in the Early Modern World Online Conference, Durham University/Oxford University Press/Yale University Press, 18-19 August

‘Consuls, Captives and Barbary Corsairs: The Maghreb in British News, 1622-1714’,  The Historian, The Iconoclast, Early Modern Quonference, 26 June 2020

‘Grateful Fresh Advices and Random Dark Relations: Maghrebi News and Experiences in British Expatriate Letters, 1660-1710’, Medieval & Early Modern Studies Festival, University of Kent, 12-13 June 2020

‘The West and the West: Britain, Morocco and Political Equivalence, c. 1600-1690’, Western Civilisation in the Twenty-First Century, University of Adelaide, 20-21 February 2020

‘Between Captives and Consuls: Searching for the “Little English” of Barbary’, invited talk as part of Listening Across Boundaries: Greg Dening and the Art of History-ing, Annual Greg Dening Memorial Lecture, with Fallon Mody and Henry Reese, University of Melbourne, 15 October 2019. https://player.vimeo.com/video/373050970?dnt=1&app_id=122963

‘Peace with Pirates: Maghrebi Warfare and Diplomacy in English Periodical News, 1622-1714’

  • The Problem of Piracy: An Interdisciplinary Conference on Plunder by Sea across the World from the Ancient to the Modern, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, 24-26 June 2019
  • Medievalism Transformed: Crime and Punishment from the Medieval to the Early Modern and the Neo-Gothic, Bangor University, 21 June 2019
  • Medieval & Early Modern Studies Festival, University of Kent, Canterbury, 14-15 June 2019

‘“Grieved in my soul that I suffered you to depart from me”: Community and Isolation in the English Houses at Tunis and Tripoli, 1679-86’, Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies Seminar Series, Monash University, Melbourne, 3 May 2019

‘Turks, Moors, Deys and Kingdoms: North African Diversity in the Stuart Periodical Press’, Boundaries, Categories, Horizons: ANZAMEMS Twelfth Biennial Conference, University of Sydney, 6-8 February 2019

‘Monopolising Morocco: Monopolies and Anti-Monopolists in Early Modern England’, Anti-Monopoly Workshop, University of Melbourne, 24 August 2018