Dr. Michael J. Levin was born and raised in Philadelphia PA. He graduated from Vassar College in 1990, and received his Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies from Yale University in 1997. He first came to the University of Akron in 1999, and received tenure and promotion to Associate Professor of History in 2005. He is the author of Agents of Empire: Spanish Ambassadors in Sixteenth-Century Italy (Cornell University Press, 2005), and a contributor to The Dangerous Trade: Spies, Spymasters and the Making of Europe, ed. Daniel Szechi (Dundee University Press, 2010).
Dr. Levin’s research and teaching focus on Renaissance Europe, with a special interest in Spain, Italy, and diplomatic/ political history. His teaching features an interdisciplinary approach, combining art, literature, philosophy, and religion with the study of history.