Dr Michael Breidenbach

Dr Michael Breidenbach is a Visiting Research Scholar at the Aquinas Institute at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford. He serves as 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 examines freedom, slavery, and the sacraments in early American Catholicism.

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 PhD in History from King’s College, Cambridge, was a visiting graduate student in History at the Sorbonne, and earned his MPhil with Distinction in Political Thought and Intellectual History at the University of Cambridge. He graduated magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, and with departmental honours from Northwestern University with a BA in History and American Studies.

Dr Breidenbach lives in Florida with his wife, Janice Chik Breidenbach, also a Visiting Research Scholar at the Aquinas Institute at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford, and Associate Professor of Philosophy at Ave Maria University, and their son. His research may be found at www.michaelbreidenbach.com

Select Publications:

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; 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.