Catherine Kovesi

Professor Catherine Kovesi is Professor of Late Medieval and Early Modern History in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, Faculty of Arts, at the University of Melbourne. She earned her DPhil at the University of Oxford and completed an undergraduate double major with honours in Italian and History at the University of Western Australia. Her research focuses on discourses surrounding luxury, consumption, and the ethics of greed in early modern Italy, particularly sumptuary laws regulating dress and expenditure, as well as Florentine and Venetian family histories and the history of Australian religious orders. Kovesi has made significant contributions through her teaching, including coordinating intensive subjects in Venice on Cultures of Consumption since 2007, The Long History of Globalisation, and the Making History capstone.

Key publications include her seminal monograph Sumptuary Law in Italy 1200-1500 (Oxford University Press, 2002), which provides a comprehensive analysis of legislative efforts to control consumption across Italian cities; the edited collection Luxury and the Ethics of Greed in Early Modern Italy (Cambridge University Press, 2018); Ursula Frayne, a Biography (University of Notre Dame Australia, Fremantle, 1996); and Pitch Your Tents on Distant Shores: A History of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd in Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand and Tahiti (Playright Publishing Pty Ltd). She co-edited the Medieval and Renaissance volumes of the six-volume A Cultural History of Luxury (Bloomsbury). Kovesi has held leadership roles as Chair of the History Programme (2022-23 and 2025) and Chair of the Australasian Centre for Italian Studies. She curated the exhibition Rhinoceros: Luxury’s Fragile Frontier in Venice (2018) with an accompanying symposium, consulted for the Australian Council for the Arts at the Venice Biennale Arte (2017-2019), and delivered public lectures such as Portrait of Venice: Majestic Murano for the National Gallery of Victoria.

Professional Email: c.kovesi@unimelb.edu.au