Marc W. S. Jaffré

Dr Marc W. S. Jaffré is a researcher for the Dutch Research Council-funded project ‘Histories of Transitional Justice’ based at the University of Groningen (Netherlands) and an honorary fellow of Durham University (United Kingdom). He is the author of the forthcoming monograph The Courtiers and the Court of Louis XIII, 1610 – 43 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2025) and one of the editors of the volume Marginalized Voices and Figures in French Festival Culture, 1500 – 1800 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2025). 

Marc’s research is motivated by an interest in understanding how people experience the state and how culture is represented and performed. In the context of his first monograph on the court of Louis XIII of France, this has meant broadening out the historiography of princely courts beyond top-down perspectives to better understand how courtiers, merchants, and financiers constructed the world of the court—thereby demonstrating the agency people have in shaping the institutions which they inhabit. Aside from princely courts, his research interests include civil war, the Wars of Religion, reconciliation, diplomacy, and hospitality. While his publications up till now have focused primarily on early modern France, he is increasingly interested in opening-up comparative perspectives with Tokugawa Japan. 

Marc has been a lecturer at Durham University, the University of Oxford (Balliol College), and the University of St Andrews (United Kingdom). He holds a PhD from the University of St Andrews, and a MPhil and a MA from the University of Oxford.