Catherine Fletcher recently published her new book, The Firearm Revolution: From Renaissance Italy to the European Empires, from Princeton University Press. Fletcher explores the emergence of firearms in Renaissance Italy and beyond, describing the social transformations that accompanied the evolution of the handgun from innovative military technology to widely used personal accessory.
Fletcher is a professor of history at Manchester Metropolitan University in the UK. She took part in a panel titled “The Gun Debate in Early Modern Europe: New Research and Teaching Perspectives” at CSGS’s fall conference in 2025.