Mr Tom Joashi

Mr Tom Joashi is a Bye-Fellow at Magdalene.

Mr Tom Joashi completed his undergraduate studies at Magdalene in French and German, graduating with a starred first in 2021. In 2022, he returned to Cambridge, this time to King’s College, as a recipient of a Cambridge Trust Scholarship for the MPhil in Architecture and Urban Studies. He subsequently moved back to Magdalene in 2023 to begin his doctoral studies, funded by the Harding Distinguished Postgraduate Scholars Programme. His PhD is supervised jointly by Dr Maximilian Sternberg in Architecture and Dr Tim Chesters in French. In 2024, he was awarded a Frank Knox Memorial Fellowship, through which he held a visiting fellowship at Harvard University during the 2024–25 academic year.

Mr Joashi’s research investigates urbanism in late Renaissance Paris during the early Wars of Religion. He is particularly interested in the ways in which notions of the ‘ideal city’ in sixteenth-century France were bound up with urban conflict. His work centres on the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572, challenging the conventional view that Parisian modernisation only began under Henri IV, once some stability had been restored to the capital. He analyses the celebratory visual and textual responses to the massacre to suggest that, for many radicals, Paris had never seemed more perfect than during its bloodiest moment.

Research Interests

Tom’s academic interests lie primarily in the Protestant Reformation, the urbanism and architecture of the European Renaissance, and contemporary theoretical approaches to urban conflict.

Qualifications

• MA Modern and Medieval Languages (Cantab)
• MPhil Architecture and Urban Studies (Cantab)

Career/Research Highlights

• Kurt Hahn Prize 2021
• D. H. Green Prize 2021
• Dalibor Vesely Prize 2023
• Frank Knox Memorial Fellowship 2024-2025