This talk marks the first meeting of the Oxford Joint Seminar in Spanish History with the Instituto Cervantes, London in the context of the Iberian History Seminar.

Manuel Lucena Giraldo is Research Scientist at the CSIC, Madrid, and Adjunct Professor in IE Business School/IE University. A leading scholar of the early modern Hispanic world, he has written widely on travels, scientific expeditions, cities, images of nations, empires, and globalisation. His recent publications include the book 82 objetos que cuentan un país: Una historia de España (2015) and the chapter ‘Renaissance, Reformations, and Mental Revolutions’ in The Oxford Illustrated History of the World (2019).