Matilda Sidel

Matilda Sidel studies the history of the early modern Iberian Atlantic. She focuses on jurisdictional problems that unfolded along the fault-lines between land and sea in the context of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century maritime expansion. She is interested in piecing together the dynamics between official claims to dominion at sea made from peninsular Spain and the complications brought back to shore by conflicts sparked in remote coastal or maritime spaces. For her doctoral project, she hopes to explore how mariners, merchants and captives of different religious and ethnic categories advocated for themselves through such legal disputes, considering these as possible forms of ‘vernacular political thought’.

Matilda holds a BA in History from the University of Cambridge and an MSt in Early Modern History from the University of Oxford, where she held the John Walsh/Hamish Scott Postgraduate History Studentship.