I joined the School of International Studies at UNNC in September 2019. Previously, I have taught at the University of Liverpool (2013-2017), Manchester Metropolitan University (2016), and King’s College London, where I was Lecturer in Early Modern Iberian History (2017-2019).

At UNNC, I teach European and International History for core modules in Year 2, and I offer an optional in Year 4 on the history of the Iberian World that gives students the opportunity to understand early globalization while exploring a fascinating array of topics. I teach also in several team-taught modules at both undergraduate and postgraduate level, and I give guest lectures for other Schools in the Faculty such as Economics.

At the School of International Studies, I am the Director of Teaching, and I am also the Director of the Global Institute for Silk Roads Studies. 

Expertise summary

• Medieval Christendom
• Early Modern Europe
• History of Christianity
• Economic History
• Intellectual History
• Iberian History
• Global and International History

Research Interests

My main research interests are: the economic, political and intellectual history of medieval and early modern Europe; and the global history of the Iberian world.

In my monograph Genoa’s Freedom: Entrepreneurship, Republicanism, and the Spanish Atlantic (Lexington, 2017), I have investigated Genoa's late medieval commercial network, as well as the city's peculiar constitutional history and tradition of private governance. I have also reconstructed the origins of the sixteenth-century Spanish-Genoese alliance and traced some of its consequences across the Atlantic, where Genoese adventurers and entrepreneurs infiltrated the Spanish Americas.

I have also worked on European travel literature during the age exploration. I am particularly interested in the transnational production of knowledge about Iberian Asia and in the different (and at times conflicting) expectations, agendas, and value systems emerging from letters and accounts. Besides publishing several articles on this topic, I have also co-edited a volume that proposes an innovative conceptual framework and a broader chronology for the study of literary images of Asia: Travel Writings on Asia. Curiosity, Identities, and Knowledge Across the East, c. 1200 to the Present (Palgrave, 2022).

My third book is titled Reimagining the Silk Roads. Interactions and Perceptions across Eurasia (Routledge, 2024). This ambitious co-edited volume brings together scholars working in many different disciplines (from archaeology to economics, from art history to political science), and it offers a new, broader definition of the silk roads while addressing the problem of its recent politicization.  

My other research interests include the history of medieval Christianity, Catholic philosophy, and self-criticism in early modern Spain.

Academia profile: http://ningbo.academia.edu/MatteoSalonia

Understanding the West: Europe as Cradle of Western Civilization

Roads to Modernity: Europe, 1789-1945

The History of Political Thought

The Iberian World: Portugal and Spain in Global History, c.1400-1900

Christian Culture in World History (MA level)

Current Economic Issues (guest lecture on Economic History)