Dr Michael Breidenbach

Dr Michael Breidenbach is Dean of the Honors College and Associate Professor of History at Ave Maria University and Senior Affiliate for Legal Humanities at the Program for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society at the University of Pennsylvania. His current research project at the Aquinas Institute at Blackfriars Hall examines freedom, slavery, and the sacraments in early American Catholicism. He is the author of Our Dear-Bought Liberty: Catholics and Religious Toleration in Early America (Harvard University Press), which was runner-up for the Journal of the American Revolution Book of the Year Award. He is co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to the First Amendment and Religious Liberty (Cambridge University Press), which has been cited in U.S. Supreme Court amicus briefs. Elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Dr. Breidenbach has held research positions at Princeton University, University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, University of Florida, and Villanova University. He obtained his Ph.D. in History from King’s College, Cambridge, was a visiting graduate student in History at the Sorbonne in Paris, and earned his M.Phil. with Distinction in Political Thought and Intellectual History at the University of Cambridge. He graduated magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, and with departmental honors from Northwestern University with a B.A. in History and American Studies. He lives in Florida with his wife, Janice Chik Breidenbach, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Ave Maria University, and their son.