Dr Ambrogio Caiani

Ambrogio received his doctorate from Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge in 2009. Since then he has taught at the universities of Greenwich and York and at Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford. He became Lecturer in Modern European History at Kent in 2013. 

Ambrogio's main research interests have focused on Revolutionary France, Napoleonic Italy and Catholicism. His doctorate examined the declining fortunes of Louis XVI's court during the early French Revolution and was published by Cambridge University Press in 2012.

Ambrogio is also very interested in how the Ancien Régime was invented and conceptualised during the 19th century. With Professor Michael Broers of the University of Oxford he organised an international conference in August 2016 entitled: ‘The Price of Peace, Modernising the Ancien Régime? 1815-1848’. This encouraged scholars to engage and share new comparative perspectives on the political history of the European Restorations and Vormärz periods. A two-volume edited collection based on the conference proceedings was published by Bloomsbury in 2019.

His second book entitled: To Kidnap a Pope: Napoleon and Pius VII 1800-1815 was published by Yale University Press in April 2021 just before the bicentenary of Napoleon’s death. It was co-winner of the Franco-British Prize in 2021.

Since then, he has written two books on the politics of religion within the Modern Catholic Church, both published by Head of Zeus. The first, from 2023, Losing a Kingdom, Gaining the World, examines that paradox of how Catholicism lost its central Italian principality but spiritually gained the globe through an unholy alliance between mission and empire. His recently published in June 2026 Flirting with Evil: The Catholic Church in the Age of Total War and Globalisation examines Catholicism's vexed relationship with power, sex and money during the twentieth century.

 Despite compromises with fascism and a damaging abuse crisis, Catholicism has been able to renew itself during the Second Vatican Council and Francis I’s pontificate. This book seeks to understand the contradictory impulses pulling the Roman church apart. On the one hand, there is a conservative culture of power, while on the other, renewal and modernisation have distinguished recent Catholicism. More details can be found on his author website: https://ambrogioacaiani.com/ and his publisher site: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/flirting-with-evil-9781800240513/

Ambrogio has published his research in several journals including The Historical Journal, English Historical Review, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, French History, European History Quarterly and International History Review. He is a member of several editorial boards and comitati scientifici.

Ambrogio's teaching focuses on 18th- and 19th-century Europe, his main area of expertise being the French Revolution, Napoleonic Empire, European Restorations and Catholicism.

Ambrogio welcomes enquiries from potential MA and PhD students interested in high politics, Religion (especially Catholicism), Empire, diplomacy, military history and princely courts during 18th- and 19th-century Europe, especially France and Italy.

Ambrogio reviews for Court Studies, the Literary Review, English Historical Review, French History, French Studies, H-France, H-Diplo, History (the Journal of the HA), International History Review, War in History, European History Quarterly, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Diplomacy & Statecraft, Modern Languages Review, The Coat of Arms and Rivista Europea di Studi Napoleonici e dell’età delle Restaurazioni.