Matthew Dowd

Matthew Dowd is a Teaching Fellow for Global Perspectives on Society (GPS) at NYU Shanghai. He specializes in the political, religious, and social history of Europe from the French Revolution to the late twentieth century, with a particular focus on French history, Catholicism, and secularization.

His dissertation, defended at Princeton University in August 2024, explores how the globally influential French Catholic world navigated the challenges of capitalist transformation and mass politics in the nineteenth century. By questioning interpretations that portray Catholics as uniformly antagonistic to European modernity, his research highlights the internal debates among Catholics regarding their engagement with an increasingly secular society. His dissertation thus offers a fresh and dynamic view of the Catholic world at a pivotal moment of political and economic change, when the future of the Catholic world seemed uncertain.

Education

• PhD, History
  Princeton University

• MA, Histoire des sociétés occidentales contemporaines
  Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, NYU Paris

• BA, International Relations, French
  Tufts University

Research Interests

• Modern Europe
• France and French Empire
• History of Christianity
• Secularism
• Global History