Biography

Katie Jakobiec is an art and architectural historian with research interests that lie broadly in interdisciplinary approaches to the built environment of the early modern period. Currently she is preparing for publication her first book, The Architecture of Commodities, which explores the buildings and sites that facilitated the exchange of goods in the Baltic Sea region. Before her fellowship at I Tatti, Katie was the Scott Opler Junior Research Fellow in Architectural History at Worcester College, University of Oxford. She has taught art and architectural history at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Toronto.

Project Summary

Katie’s project investigates the agricultural (oeconomie) manual and the production and dissemination of environmental knowledge in the early modern period. With the advent of printing, classical and medieval oeconomie manuals became widely available in Europe. They were translated into vernacular languages and spawned a large literary culture in a remarkably global context. The aims of this project are to investigate the importance of oeconomie manuals on the built environment, especially in the context of natural resource extraction and trade, as well as territorial politics.