Samuel Morrison Gallacher MPhil & MA (Cantab.) FRNS read history at Peterhouse, University of Cambridge, graduating in 2009 with First Class Honours and the Sir Herbert Butterfield Prize for History. Since completing his M.Phil. at Cambridge in 2010, he has held a doctoral scholarship at IMT Institute for Advanced Studies in Lucca, Italy. Under the supervision of Professor Emanuele Pellegrini (University of Venice Ca’ Foscari), Professor Salvatore Settis (Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa), and Dr Alessio Assonitis at the Medici Archive Project (MAP), Gallacher is in the final stages of his doctoral research, Gift-exchange at the court of Cosimo I de’ Medici, 1537-1574. By tracing both the nature of the gift and the study of its exchange, he argues that gift-exchange is a central feature to almost every aspect of courtly life: the undercurrent to the flows of power, patronage, and prestige. He places particular emphasis on the symbolic value of the diplomatic gift. In pursuit of his research, he was a Thesaurus Poloniae Junior Fellow (Spring 2013) in Krakow, Poland, a Samuel Freeman Charitable Trust Fellow at MAP (Summer 2013), and an Affiliated Researcher with the International Council of Museums European Alliance (2012-2013). Gallacher has chaired panels at international conferences and presented several papers drawn from his doctoral research, most recently, at PALATIUM’s European Courts in a Globalized World (Lisbon, 7th & 8th November 2013) and the Pre-modern Diplomats Network’s Splendid Encounters: Diplomats and Diplomacy in Europe, 1500-1575 (Warsaw, 20th & 21st September 2013). Currently, he is working on his contribution to Brill’s Companion to Cosimo I de’ Medici (2015) and organising with Dr Maurizio Arfaiolo (MAP) an international conference, Cosimo di Giovanni de’ Medici (Magnus Dux Etruriae), which will be held at the State Archive of Florence in May 2014. He rejoins the Medici Archive Project as a Junior Research Fellow for 2014.
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