Bill Kent Memorial Lecture

An annual lecture by a distinguished scholar in the field of Medieval and Renaissance Studies in honour of the late Professor F. W. (Bill) Kent, the Founding Director of our campus, who was a historian of Renaissance Italy and a world authority on Lorenzo de’ Medici.

Organised by the Monash University School of Philosophical, Historical, and Indigenous Studies and supported by Monash Prato.

For more information or to receive an invitation, please contact Dr Jessica O'Leary, School of Philosophical, Historical, and Indigenous Studies, Monash University (jessica.oleary@monash.edu).

You can watch video recordings of some of the past lectures.

Date & time: Thursday 12 November, 6.00pm - 8.00pm
6.00 - 6.25pm: Guest arrival & registration
6.30 - 7.30pm: Bill Kent Memorial Lecture
7.30 - 8.30pm: Light refreshments will be provided

Venue: Monash Conference Centre,  Level 7, 30 Collins Street, Melbourne

Professor Susan Broomhall will speak on: Catherine de' Medici: Italian style and the Medici legacy  in sixteenth-century France

Catherine de' Medici, wife of the Valois king Henri II, is one of the most famous queens and queen mothers of the sixteenth century. This lecture explores how she navigated the cultural benefits that her Medici heritage promised as well as the challenges that it brought at the French court. Catherine's period at the height of French power coincided with an explosion of art, architecture and cultural innovation that was in no small measure the result of her keen interest in these domains and their opportunity for promoting both the Medici dynasty of her birth and the Valois dynasty of her marriage. This lecture will draw upon her many artistic projects to consider how she fashioned her identity, and the power of Italian style in making these claims.

Susan Broomhall FAHA FRHistS is Professor of Early Modern Studies and leads the Gender and Women's History Research Centre at the Australian Catholic University. She is the author of numerous monographs and edited collections focussing on women and gender in the early modern world, including The Identities of Catherine de' Medici (Brill, 2021), Elite Women and the Italian Wars, 1494-1559, with Carolyn James (Cambridge University Press, 2024) and was General Editor of the 6-volume The Bloomsbury Cultural History of Gender (Bloomsbury, 2025). Her most recent book is Gender and the Glove in Early Modern England, with James Daybell (Routledge/Amsterdam University Press, 2026).

Thursday 12 November, 6.00–8.00pm, Monash Conference Centre

Registrations: Please ensure you have registered via the online registration form by Thursday 5 November 2026.

If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to contact Jessica O’Leary via jessica.oleary@monash.edu