Joshua Fitzgerald is a 2025 Munby Fellow in Bibliography with the Cambridge University Library (CUL) and a Visiting Fellow at St. John’s College, specialising in Nahua (commonly “Aztec”) Visual and Material Culture and Museum Studies. His Munby project, “Recovering the Painted-Over Lessons of Colonial Mexico: Material Histories of the Enigmatic Epistolae… linguam mexicanam at Cambridge (BFBS MS 375),” identifies a truly unique sixteenth-century manuscript written in Nahuatl held at CUL. It builds upon his 2023 BA/Leverhulme Small Grant in Lectionary Studies to delve further into MS 375’s ethnohistorical context and materiality.
Josh received his PhD (History) and Museum Studies certification with the University of Oregon in 2019 and was the 2019-20 Director’s Office Graduate Fellow with the Getty Research Institute (Digital Florentine Codex). In 2020, he and his family moved to Cambridge to start the Rubinoff JRF in “Art as a Source of Knowledge” (Churchill College). As the Rubinoff JRF, he has been affiliated with the Faculty in History, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Centre for Latin American Studies, History of Art, CRASSH and Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA). His interests include Nahua-Colonial education and learning science, Mesoamerican zooarchaeology, ethnobotany and foodways and the use of Mexican heritage in Modern boardgames and video games. He works to spark interest in Mexico by contributing to exhibitions and public engagement activities (e.g. Being Human Festival 2023 and 2024 Cambridge Festival) and, most recently, his MAA collections research and poetry(!) were sponsored by Cambridge Creative Encounters and UCAM SHAPE Hub.
