Lynn Martin

Biography

Lynn Martin is an award-winning historian, a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and a recipient of a Centenary Medal from the Australian government for his contribution to Australian society through history. In a previous incarnation as a historian he specialized in the history of the Jesuits, and his books include Henry III and the Jesuit Politicians, The Jesuit Mind: The Mentality of an Elite in Early Modern France (1988), Plague?: Jesuit Accounts of Epidemic Disease in the Sixteenth Century (1996), plus shorter pieces on Roman prostitutes, insanity in the sixteenth century, the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, the family, and papal policies during the wars of religion. He subsequently gave up the Jesuits for drink and now specialises in the history of drinking in traditional Europe. This has resulted in books on Alcohol, Sex, and Gender in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (2001) and Alcohol, Violence and Disorder in Tradition Europe (2009) as well as articles on drinking by the clergy, by the old, by women, and by different nationalities, and on foetal alcohol syndrome in the past, the baptism of wine, and the reform of popular drinking.  In 1997 Martin became Founder-Director of the University of Adelaide’s Research Centre for the History of Food and Drink, a position he held until 2004. As Director he was responsible for the establishment of the University’s Graduate Program in Gastronomy and was the Program’s first Managing Director. He also edited with Barbara Santich two books that resulted from the Research Centre’s series of conferences and symposia, Gastronomic Encounters and Culinary History. After retiring at the end of 2003, Martin was a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Adelaide until the University excommunicated him for his refusal to take an oath of allegiance.